


No Rest from Sound

by unfolded73



Series: The Lostverse [7]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Threats of Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-19 17:54:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 17
Words: 33,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10645029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfolded73/pseuds/unfolded73
Summary: Originally published June - July 2008. Rose and the Doctor have been back together for four years. As Donna makes a big change in her life, the Doctor examines his relationship with Rose. Will the return of an old enemy destroy them? (AU after 4x06).





	1. Chapter 1

Rose examined herself in her vanity mirror, turning her head this way and that, an eyeliner pencil clutched in one hand. She sighed. Looking at your own face every day made it hard to be aware of the aging process, but occasionally she caught a glimpse of herself, just out of the corner of her eye, and the face she saw wasn’t the one she expected. She supposed she was being vain and silly to worry about getting older when she was still comfortably ensconced in her late twenties, but there it was. Rose’s mouth dropped open as she stretched her face in order to apply the eyeliner. If her mother could hear her thoughts now, how she would laugh. 

She heard the shower shut off in the bathroom. After a few minutes he emerged, followed by a cloud of steam. Rose watched him walk behind her in the mirror, a towel slung low around his waist, his hair damp and experiencing one of its few moments of flatness before he attacked it with his usual assortment of hair care products.

The Doctor pulled his tuxedo down from where he had hooked it earlier on the door of his wardrobe. “How many people are going to be at this thing, do you think?” he asked.

Rose shrugged. “Dunno. Donna didn’t show me the guest list. I think Phil has a large family though, and a load of colleagues. Might be a lot.” She capped the eyeliner and started rooting through her makeup box for mascara. “Should be a good party, though.”

“If there aren’t any exploding Christmas ornaments, I’ll count it as a success.”

“I think that’s unlikely, it being May and everything,” Rose remarked.

“Suppose so.” He sat down on the bed and started digging through the drawer of his bedside table. 

“Seems like an awful lot of fuss to me,” Rose said as she carefully applied mascara.

“Hmm? What does?”

“Weddings. All that money and effort and worry. All that expectation, dreaming of this perfectly perfect day, and then if it rains or the caterer screws up or the flowers are the wrong colour, it’s the end of the world. And for what? They’ve been living together for almost a year, so how does this change their relationship?”

The Doctor was still searching through the drawer, pulling out books, a spool of wire, an antique fountain pen, a bag of jelly babies, and assorted other items and tossing them on the floor. He looked up at Rose briefly. “I don’t know. I think humans have always felt the need for ceremonies to mark life changes like this. Birth, death, the union of two people … there’s a basic human need to acknowledge these things formally. And then there’s the fact that Great Britain, well, in fact most 21st century governments, recognize marriage officially, and impart certain rights to married people that they don’t impart to unmarried people.” He threw his hands up. “Rose, have you seen my cufflinks?”

Rose twisted her mascara closed and got up from the vanity. She wore a short slip and thigh-high stockings, and her hair was gathered in a messy bun on top of her head. Pulling out the top drawer of the Doctor’s dresser, she dug around for a moment before triumphantly producing a small, flat jewellery box. “Right where you put them last time.” She smiled at him and brought the box over.

“Ah. Thank you.” He took the offered cufflinks, tossing them next to him on the bed, and grabbed Rose’s hand to pull her onto his lap. She straddled his thighs and put her forearms on his shoulders. “So you don’t pine for all that? The white dress, the bridesmaids, the bouquet?”

“You know I don’t,” Rose said, kissing him on the nose.

The Doctor looked at her seriously. “Do I?”

“You should. If I wanted all that stuff would I be here?” She threaded her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. “I’m perfectly content with my life with you. And I’m not just saying what I think you want to hear. I really, really am happy.”

“Okay.” He grinned at her, showing his teeth.

“See, you say okay, but you’re still worrying about it. You think I’m gonna wake up one morning and discover a sudden need to get married and have a proper house filled with babies, and that I’m gonna run out on you. You do, don’t try to deny it, I know you too well,” she added off his look.

“I might worry about it a teensy tiny bit,” he conceded.

Rose studied his face. He had gotten older too, she thought. In the four years since she had rejoined him on the TARDIS, his face had gathered a few lines that it didn’t have before. She had even caught him plucking a grey hair from the top of his head once, a fact that she spent a week teasing him about. He eventually reminded her that he would get his revenge, as his body wasn’t going to age as quickly as hers, even assuming he kept the same one. She stopped the teasing rather quickly, and the fact that she pretended to be asleep when he came to their bedroom that night with amorous intentions was purely a coincidence.

“Don’t worry. Really, don’t.” Rose said, and gave him a quick kiss on the mouth. “I am as happy today as I’ve ever been during my time with you. I promise.”

The Doctor nodded. “Sorry, you’re right. I’m done worrying,” he said, and he seemed to mean it. Rose kissed him again and bit gently on his lower lip. He opened his mouth and Rose accepted his invitation to deepen the kiss. They stayed that way for a few minutes, just kissing, concentrating on each other’s mouths. Finally the Doctor pulled back. “We should probably stop this before we miss the wedding entirely.”

Rose leaned to one side and licked his earlobe, pulling it into her mouth and biting it very gently. “Don’t we live in a time machine?” she asked.

“What if it goes wrong and we end up missing it by a month instead of half an hour?” he asked, but she felt his hands on her bottom, squeezing.

“The TARDIS wouldn’t do that. She fears the wrath of Donna.”

“Quite right too,” the Doctor said, kissing Rose more passionately. His hands came around and ran up Rose’s legs, skating over the top of her stockings to the bare skin of her thighs.

Finally breaking the kiss, Rose said, “I’m suddenly realizing that you are, for all intents and purposes, naked.”

“I’m suddenly realizing that these stockings are … _unbelievably_ sexy,” the Doctor proclaimed, lifting the hem of her slip to examine them.

“Thanks, that was sort of the intention.”

“Very good intention.” He looked up at her and smirked. “I think we’ll take our chances with a short trip backwards in time.”

“Yay.” Rose ran her hands down his chest, allowing her fingers to tease the sensitive skin of his nipples as she did so. She kissed him along his jaw line, finding the spots on his neck and below his ear that she had learned from long experience would ratchet up his desire. She felt one of his hands slip between her thighs, shifting her knickers out of the way so that he could slip a long finger inside her. Rose moaned and moved her pelvis in small circles to heighten the sensation. 

“If I could spend a millennium with you,” the Doctor said, panting slightly, “I would never get tired of touching you.”

“A millennium?” Rose gasped.

“Indeed.” He slid another finger inside and teased her clit with his thumb, making Rose cry out and buck against his hand. “There is nothing as sexy as feeling you here, ready for me. And the way your cheeks flush, the way your pupils dilate,” he said, kissing her briefly. “I can’t imagine a more exquisite creature.”

Rose let her head fall back, awash in pleasure from the feel of his hand and the sound of his voice. She had to admit that the way the Doctor talked during sex was one of her favourite things about him as a lover, her own personal little kink. Once, as an experiment, she had asked him to just talk dirty to her, no touching allowed. It had been amazingly erotic, and she had gotten very close. When he finally touched her, she had come in a matter of seconds. She often thought that it was a shame they rarely spent any time apart, as he would be so very good at phone sex.

Reaching down to his waist, Rose tugged at the towel he was still wearing, but her knees had it trapped so that she couldn’t shift it. Groaning, she pulled away from his fingers and stood up. She shimmied out of her knickers, letting them drop to the floor as the Doctor jerked his towel out of the way. Rose climbed back onto his lap. 

The Doctor leaned back slightly, his hands flat on the bed behind him to support his weight. His erection bobbed between them and Rose reached down to stroke him, eliciting a sudden exhale from him as his head fell back bonelessly. Rose watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Oh, that’s good,” he said. She finally couldn’t resist leaning down to suck on his exposed neck, scooting further onto his lap and rubbing against his length. The Doctor fell onto his back, pulling at her hips. 

“You want something?” she asked knowingly, one side of her mouth quirking up in a smile.

“Yes.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to fuck me,” he said, his voice hoarse with desire.

Sometimes his talk was romantic and sometimes it was poetic and sometimes it was just plain dirty, and all of it drove her crazy. Not willing to wait another second, Rose grabbed his cock and guided herself onto it. They both moaned simultaneously. 

He looked up at her, his eyelids at half mast as she rocked on top of him. “You are … so beautiful. My Rose.”

“Yours,” she agreed.

She found a perfect tempo, a perfect swivel of her hips, a perfect friction as she worked herself on him, and they were both silent for a while, lost in the bliss of their bodies. The Doctor brought a hand between them and provided more pressure on her clit. “Oh god,” Rose breathed, her movements becoming more erratic.

“Please,” the Doctor whispered, his eyes squeezing shut, “Never stop … never stop making me feel this way.” His other hand came up to her breast and he squeezed her nipple through the slip and her bra. 

“Never.” Rose felt her climax starting to bloom inside her and as always, she lost the capacity for coherent speech. She put her hands on his chest and leaned over slightly, seeking a deeper angle as she ground him into the mattress. She cried out as she came, shuddering all over as the overwhelming pleasure took her. 

The Doctor grabbed her hips, his fingers digging in hard enough to leave marks as he thrust up into her. “Oh, yes … yes, Rose … _yes_ ,” he grated out. His orgasm hit him and Rose watched as his eyes popped open and his mouth formed an O, sound for once deserting him. 

Gradually, their movements slowed to a stop and Rose flopped over on his chest, her breath coming out in a whoosh. She giggled into his shoulder. “That was, um …”

“Yeah. Top ten, do you think?”

Rose pushed up and looked at him, considering. “I don’t know. Maybe top twenty.”

He grinned. “I’ll settle for that.”

“We’d better get ready for the wedding,” Rose said, although she made no move to get up. 

“Yup. Time to get into the old tuxedo and go set some coordinates. How far should I go back, forty-five minutes?”

Rose looked up at the clock. “Make it an hour. I have to wash up now and probably redo my makeup.” She kissed him on the cheek and extracted herself from his arms. Standing up awkwardly, she retrieved her knickers from where she had dropped them. On her way to the bathroom, she added, “And put all that junk back in your drawer please, don’t just leave it on the floor.”

“Yes, ma’am.”


	2. Chapter 2

Martha watched as Donna flung open the door to the bride’s dressing room. “Oh, thank God you’re on time, I was worried you’d be late,” Donna said, pulling Rose and the Doctor in. She immediately swatted at the Doctor’s lapel. “Come on, get out the sonic, check me over. No Huon particles, yeah? Nothing alien at all that’s going to ruin my day, right?”

“Donna, I’m sure you’re fine,” the Doctor said soothingly, but at the same time he pulled the sonic screwdriver from the pocket of his tuxedo and ran it over her. After several seconds of buzzing and blinking, he switched it off. “Right as rain,” he said, grinning and holding out his arms to Donna for a hug. 

She fell against him. “I am going _completely_ mad. The bouquets and corsages haven’t been delivered yet, one of Phil’s groomsmen has food poisoning or the stomach flu or a hangover or something, and I still can’t stop thinking that I’m going to get zapped into the TARDIS as soon as I start to walk down the aisle,” she said, clutching the Doctor. He patted her back somewhat tentatively, his eyes wide.

“Donna, it will all work out, I’m sure,” Rose said, then met the Doctor’s eyes, mouthing “ _See?_ ” to him as she twirled one finger next to her ear. She reached down to smooth out her cornflower-coloured bridesmaid’s dress, then looked around to take in the other people in the room. Donna’s mother Sylvia and her childhood mate Veena sat in front of a makeup mirror, chattering away at each other. As soon as Rose spied Martha, sitting to one side and wearing the same dress as Rose and Veena, she trotted over. “Was it like this for you?” Rose asked, flopping into the chair next to her.

Martha smiled. “Nah, not so crazy as this. But Tom and I had a tiny ceremony; just family, really.” 

“That seems wise.” The two of them watched as the Doctor attempted to coax Donna down off the metaphorical ledge. 

Martha looked Rose up and down and sighed. “I think this colour looks better on you,” she said, frowning at her own dress. Then she shrugged. “Oh, well. So how’s life on the TARDIS these days?”

Martha and Rose had finally met about six months after Rose’s return from the parallel universe, when a particularly nasty alien megalomaniac had required Torchwood to team up with the Doctor to neutralize the threat. At first it had been a little strange; Martha had come to think of Rose as more of a mythical creature than an actual woman, so it was with some trepidation that she approached their first meeting. She felt a vague sense of shame at the way she had once hated the Rose of her imagination, but she found the real Rose to be kind and gracious and funny, and the two of them had become friends quickly. Regular visits by Rose and the Doctor to Cardiff had allowed the friendship to grow.

“It’s good,” Rose answered. “Fairly uneventful recently, if you can believe that.” 

“No, I can’t,” Martha said, laughing.

“And how’s Torchwood?”

“Weird, with Gwen gone.” Gwen had left the previous year to have a baby, and it was looking unlikely that she would ever choose to return to that dangerous job now that she had a family to raise. “And did you hear about Jack and Ianto?” Martha asked.

“No, what?”

“Ianto dumped him again.”

Rose rolled her eyes. “Doesn’t that make the third time?”

“Fourth, by my count. Ianto’s dating a girl named Cecily who works as a paralegal.”

“Girl? I thought Ianto was gay.”

Martha grinned. “Ianto is heterosexual and Jacksexual, that’s what I think. Anyway, Jack’s bringing someone else to the wedding.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know, they met on Thursday.” Both women giggled at that. 

Rose nudged Martha and lowered her voice. “How’s the other thing going that you told me about last time?”

“No luck yet,” Martha said. “You know, you spend your whole adult life up until this point worrying about getting pregnant, so you start to assume that it can happen ridiculously easily. Then when you’re trying, it suddenly seems so difficult. Makes you wonder what you were worried about all that time.”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s not something I’ve had to think about in several years, but I do vaguely recall what it was like, fretting about condoms or remembering to take a pill every day.”

Martha raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t sure … I mean, I assume your biochemistry is too different …”

“I can’t get pregnant the old-fashioned way, if that’s what you’re asking. It would require ‘a great deal of genetic jiggery-pokery’ is what he said.” Rose shrugged. “Which is fine, I mean, what the hell would I do with a baby on the TARDIS?”

“You might change your mind someday.”

Rose shook her head. “I really don’t think so.”

Martha just smiled. “I’ll ask you again in five years, shall I?”

“Well, anyway,” Rose said, “at least the trying is fun, right?”

“Sure, as long as I don’t get too stressed out about it. Worrying whether I’m ovulating sort of takes some of the spontaneity out of it.”

At that point, the Doctor wandered over to them, having left Donna back in Veena’s hands. He uttered a heavy sigh. “Donna wants me to go scan the church for ‘alien whats-its’.”

Rose laughed. “Well, you’d better hop to it then.”

 

*** 

 

The Doctor stood with Donna at the back of the church, waiting. He watched Rose, who was across the foyer, clutching a bouquet of flowers and whispering with Martha and Veena. He couldn’t help remembering what she was wearing under her dress. 

“What are you grinning about?” Donna whispered, frowning.

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Donna rolled her eyes. “And you just had to wear those shoes, didn’t you?”

“What? I put on the black ones,” he complained, his voice rising in pitch. “You know, for someone about to get married, you certainly are grumpy.”

She looked at him. “I’m just scared, is all.”

“Donna, look, I promise you. I’ve checked you, I’ve checked the church, I’ve even surreptitiously checked a few of the guests. In spite of my presence here, which might understandably make you nervous, there is absolutely nothing going on that will interrupt or otherwise mess up your wedding.”

“That’s not what I’m afraid of,” Donna said, shaking her head.

“Then what? Not getting cold feet, I hope?” he said, grinning.

She smacked him on the arm. “No. I just … how do I know that this is going to work? That he’s not going to stop loving me someday, that he’s not going to wake up one morning and look at me and think, what the hell am I doing here?”

“I guess you don’t know it. You can’t, not really,” the Doctor said, thinking of his earlier conversation with Rose.

“Well, thanks for that little vote of confidence.”

The Doctor turned and looked at Donna. He put a hand on her cheek. “Donna, you are one of the most beautiful, strong-willed, fascinating, intelligent women I have ever had the pleasure to know. Any man who gets to _look_ at you, much less marry you and spend his life with you, should consider himself the luckiest man on Earth.”

Donna gaped at him, then smacked him on the arm again. “Stop it, you’re going to make me cry and ruin my makeup.”

“Sorry,” the Doctor said.

They stood silently for a minute. “You old softie,” Donna said, nudging him with her shoulder.

“Well, I can be, yeah.”

“You know,” Donna said, eyeing him, “There’s nothing to stop you and Rose from doing this.”

“Doing what?” the Doctor asked.

“Getting _married_ , dummy.”

“ _What_? Why would we do that?” His voice went up in pitch again, causing Veena to turn around and shush him. 

“Oh, never mind,” Donna drawled.

“Rose thinks weddings are stupid, she told me so.”

“All women say that when they think it’s not in the cards for them. And maybe weddings _are_ stupid. But that’s not all getting married is, and I think you know that, even though you’re playing dumb. Getting married is about making a vow to spend your lives together, to support each other, to … oh, forget it,” Donna said, throwing up her hands.

The Doctor glanced over at Rose. “I know. I do know. But if we were to say, ‘til death do us part, you know what that means. It means until her life runs out and she leaves me behind, and I don’t like to be reminded of that. So I try to think about us just in the here and now.”

Donna touched his arm. “I get that, but … do you want to spend the rest of her life with each other?”

“Of course.”

“Do you think of her as your wife?”

“I … I never thought about it before. I guess, on some level, yes, I do.”

“Well then … ?” Donna prompted him. 

The Doctor didn’t say anything, and Donna finally changed the subject. “I wish my granddad could’ve lived to see this day.”

“Yeah. Good old Wilf.” The music changed, and Donna and the Doctor stepped forward.

“By the way,” the Doctor said, holding out his elbow to Donna. “I’m honoured that you asked me to do this.”

“Well, with my father and grandfather gone, it just made sense, didn’t it? Outside of Phil, you’re the most important man in my life. Before Phil, you sort of _were_ my life, you and Rose and the TARDIS.” She took his arm and looked ahead, down to where her future husband was standing with his best man and groomsmen. “Now, _this_ is my life,” she said, slightly wistful.

The music crescendoed as the congregation stood up and faced them. “And a fantastic life it’s gonna be, Donna. Just you wait and see.” With that, they walked down the aisle together.


	3. Chapter 3

“Jack!” 

Rose ran into the ballroom and was immediately swept up in a hug by the man himself. He swung her around in a wide arc as she squealed. “Hey, dollface!” Jack said, kissing her. “Listen, you need to save me two dances minimum, got that?”

“Does this count as one?” she asked as he finally set her down on her feet.

“No, it does not.” Jack grinned at her. “You look gorgeous as always.”

“Thank you,” she said primly, sketching a small curtsy. “Donna could’ve done us much worse, as far as bridesmaid’s dresses go.”

“Can I get you a drink?”

“Sure,” she said, and they started walking toward the bar. 

“And where has the love of your life swanned off to?” Jack asked, looking around.

“I think he’s torturing the photographer. He’ll be along in a bit, I imagine.” 

“He better be. Leaving a beautiful woman like you, alone at a party like this … could be dangerous. All sorts of men here who might try to sweep you off your feet.”

Rose laughed, accepting a glass of white wine from the bartender. “They can try, Jack, they can try. They don’t know what they’re up against.”

“True.” Jack ordered a scotch, which he took and clinked against Rose’s glass. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” Rose said, sipping her wine. “So, I heard you were bringing someone new to the wedding?”

“Nah, didn’t work out really, so I came stag.”

“And what, may I ask, did you do to Ianto this time?”

“What makes you think I did anything?” he said, indignant. “Actually, I think he’s getting the urge to settle down, get married, have a family. And none of those things is going to happen with me, let’s be honest.” He looked away from her quickly, then changed the subject. “The ceremony was lovely.”

“It was, wasn’t it? This was my first time as a bridesmaid.”

“Was it?”

“Well, when would I have had an opportunity before now? I started travelling with the Doctor when I was nineteen. And I never had any close girlfriends in the other universe, just Mickey and Jake and some acquaintances. Then it was back to the TARDIS. Four years later, here I am.”

“Do you ever get lonely? Especially now that it’s just the two of you again?”

“Not often. When I do, we pay you lot a visit, or Donna in London. I miss Donna especially sometimes; it was nice having a best girlfriend, and it was the three of us for more than two years. But life has to move on, doesn’t it? And there are advantages to being on our own again.”

“What, sex in the console room?” Jack asked.

“Yes, exactly,” Rose replied, laughing.

“Exactly what?” The Doctor asked as he stole up behind Rose and slipped an arm around her waist. 

“Nothing,” Rose replied, giving him a quick peck on the cheek. “What sort of trouble have you been getting up to then?”

“Who says I’ve been getting up to any trouble? Mind you, that photographer is an angry young man, isn’t he? And rubbish at taking constructive criticism.” He swiped a handful of canapés off a passing tray as he talked, cramming one into his mouth and talking around it.

Rose just grinned sardonically at Jack. “See what I mean? What woman could even think of straying from this?”

 

*** 

 

Rose had been seated between Donna and the Doctor at the head table, where she currently sat picking at her meal. The Doctor finished eating and wandered over to where the DJ was set up. Rose couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, although she could tell that whatever it was made the DJ quite nervous.

“Can’t he ever sit still?” Donna leaned over and asked.

“Not in my experience, no.”

“I wanted to ask him, but I wasn’t sure if I should. Have you heard anything from Jenny lately?”

“Not in quite a while, no.”

“Is he still just as touchy about it?”

“Yeah. Well … yeah.” They had finally found Jenny after months and months of searching. She was in the process of liberating a rag-tag rebel alliance from a totalitarian regime, and the Doctor was elated to join in and help her. It was a happy, tearful reunion with lots of running for their lives, and it seemed at first that Jenny would be staying with them for the foreseeable future. It didn’t take long, though, for the Doctor’s somewhat overbearing personality and hers to clash. She wanted to do things her own way and he wanted her to learn from his vast Time Lord experience, and after weeks of arguing she finally threw up her hands and booked passage on a freighter off of the moon they had landed on. It was teenage rebellion writ large, and Rose had been angry for a while afterwards. Angry at Jenny for being inflexible and for hurting the Doctor, and angry at the Doctor for being inflexible and generally too bull-headed to see the sense in compromise. Finally, she had to admit that the separation was probably best for both of them for now, much as she would never tell the Doctor that. They saw Jenny once in a long while, but things were always strained. In the meantime, Jenny had her own version of Rose’s souped-up mobile phone, so theoretically she could call them if she wanted. For the most part, she didn’t.

Donna just shook her head. “The only two Time Lords in existence, and they can’t manage to get along.” 

“She’s not a Time Lord, not really. She’s just biologically a Gallifreyan.”

“Whatever.” Donna took a sip of her wine. “It still seems a shame.”

“It is, but … I think it’s for the best for now. Maybe, you know, in time …” Rose shrugged.

“Maybe.” Donna looked across the room and noticed a signal from the DJ. “Well, either the DJ needs me to rescue him from the Doctor or it’s time for the first dance.” She turned to her new husband. “Whadda ya say, shall we show these people how it’s done?”

 

***

 

“We haven’t danced in a while.”

“We danced at the banquet for the crowning of that emperor, what was his name? On that planet with all the cheese?” Rose pressed her cheek against the Doctor’s shoulder allowed herself to be guided in a slow circle.

The Doctor chuckled. “Emperor Percivilious Martimus Decalacentious. The Eighteenth.”

“That’s the one,” Rose said.

“Yes, but that was, oh, almost a year ago now. Entirely too long to go without dancing.”

“Well,” Rose mused, “Taken another way, I could say that we _danced_ just this morning.”

“Ah well, yes, you could say that.” He tightened his grip on her waist. “And as much as I adore that metaphorical dancing, I think we should perhaps do more of this kind of dancing.”

“Sure. I’m all for it.”

“Did I mention that you look beautiful today?” he asked.

“You did, actually, but I don’t mind if you repeat yourself.”

“Good. You look beautiful.”

“Thanks. And you, in that tux … Well, you know how I feel about the tux.”

“Hmm, I do seem to recall you liking it, yes,” he remarked, smirking at her. “So,” he said, gesturing around at the room in general, “you still feel the same way about weddings that you did this morning?”

Rose lifted her head from his shoulder and shrugged. “Well,” she said, and pondered the question. “Their vows were lovely. Very romantic. But still, all this … I mean, a lot of the trappings are nonsense.”

“Very little of it is actually about being married.”

“Exactly! Being married is just … you know, sharing your lives together.”

“Like us,” he said, then looked surprised at having said it.

“Yeah. Like us.” Rose watched his eyes and saw something there that gave her pause, some thought that was making him scrutinize her. The intensity of it made her look away. “I mean, I guess it’s for the benefit of one’s parents too, the whole wedding thing,” she said sort of sadly.

“Right.”

The slow song ended and a faster song started up (“Get Down Tonight” by K.C. and the Sunshine Band, as it happens), so Rose and the Doctor separated and walked off the dance floor, holding hands. The hand-holding was short-lived, as Rose was immediately dragged back onto the dance floor by Donna and Martha. Several campy wedding reception songs and one of her promised slow-dances with Jack later, Rose finally made her way back to the Doctor and flopped down into the chair next to him. It was time for the cake-cutting, which they watched in amused silence.

“Shall I go fetch us some cake?” the Doctor asked.

“Ooh, yes please.”

It was dense cake with a raspberry filling, and Rose found it to be sinfully delicious. She was so focused on the cake that she didn’t notice Jack coming over until he was practically standing on top of her. “Care for another dance, Rosie?”

She looked up. “Jack, I’m eating cake.”

“Yeah, Jack, I think you should know better than to get between Rose and cake,” the Doctor said, putting his last forkful into his mouth.

“Well, _you_ dance with me then,” Jack said to the Doctor, smirking.

Rose took a breath, preparing to utter a huge laugh, when the Doctor shrugged and put down his fork. “Yeah, all right.” Rose’s laugh died and she looked between the Doctor and Jack, wondering if the cake contained any odd ingredients that were making her hallucinate.

Jack looked surprised too, but then he just grinned wider. “Excellent. Come on.”

It wasn’t that she thought the Doctor was all that concerned about his perceived sexuality. He couldn’t have cared less about that. Still, he knew full well that Jack was and always had been a little in love with him, and in Rose’s experience the Doctor had never done anything to encourage that. She watched them walk onto the dance floor together, shaking her head. Maybe a few drinks had loosened him up.

The music was slow, with a heavy backbeat. It made so incongruous an image that Rose could hardly process it at first, the two of them dancing. They were talking and laughing, on one level looking just like old mates. But their bodies were moving together, Jack with his large hands on the Doctor’s hips, the Doctor with his on Jack’s biceps. The were almost the same height, the Doctor just a shade taller. Rose watched, her cake forgotten. 

Martha dropped into the chair next to Rose, her eyes also trained on the dance floor. “Do you know what I call that?” Martha asked.

Rose kept watching them for a long moment. “Almost illegally sexy?” she asked.

Martha nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, that about covers it.”

“I think I might’ve just drooled a little bit.” She looked around. “Where’s the videographer? I might need a recording of this for further … study. Or possibly blackmail.”

“How the hell did Jack talk him into it?” 

“He asked,” Rose said, shrugging. “And you know what? Anything else they want to do together, as long as I can watch—” She clapped a hand over her mouth, giggling. “Did I just say that out loud?”

Martha laughed. “Yeah, but I won’t tell.”

When the song ended, Jack and the Doctor headed over to them, their continued chattering somewhat at odds with their masculine display of sexuality. The Doctor held out a hand to Rose, pulling her up. “Let’s dance,” he said, leading her onto the floor and pulling her flush against him.

Rose closed her eyes and tried in vain to steady her breathing. “So, you and Jack dancing together …”

“Yeah?”

“That was … I can’t put into words how sexy that was,” she said, biting her lip.

“It was? Hmm, I never would’ve guessed,” he said with affected innocence.

“Wait a minute,” said Rose. “You did that on purpose, just to … just to turn me on?”

“Might’ve done. Did it work?”

“God yes.”

“Good.” He put his mouth against her ear and whispered, “Show me how much when we get back to the TARDIS.”


	4. Chapter 4

Lucy Saxon watched idly as the blood dripped from her palm to the floor. After a moment she released her fingers, looking at the half-moon shapes in her palms created by her fingernails. She closed her fist again and tried to match them up, the nails and the holes in her hands. She clenched her fist and gasped at the resulting pain, her head lolling back and hitting the headrest of her chair. Clench and release. Clench and release. 

 

_She breathes the sharp stench of fire, and it lingers in the back of her throat. She sifts ashes through her fingers, the feel of them strangely soothing. Finally, she finds it. The ring. She brushes it off, and the seal stares at her. Lucy almost drops it, then laughs at her silliness. It’s just a ring. No, it isn’t just a ring. It’s everything. Her fondest wish and her worst nightmare._

 

“Lucy!” The shout brought her slowly out of her reverie and she stood on shaky legs. The doorway gaped at her. She could just run. She could just turn around and run, and maybe he wouldn’t think to look for her for a few minutes. Maybe she could get to the street and call for help. Someone would stop, and she would get in with them, and they would drive fast. Fast, fast, faster than light, and she would be gone. Flown away. Flown the coop. Lucy Saxon has flown the coop.

She shuffled over to the door and went in.

 

_Lucy takes the ring to the man he told her about. The man contacts others. Things happen that she doesn’t understand. She sits and waits and looks at her hands. Red. He liked red. She wore a red dress, and he liked it so much that he knocked her to the ground. She painted her nails red with shaking hands. Not the same red as the blood, but almost. Almost._

_Later, another man comes and takes her to a house. Something is happening and it’s important, she is sure. She sits and waits._

 

He was standing in front of a mirror, straightening his tie. The sight of him in the black suit and the black tie and the polished shoes made her want to scream. Nothing had changed. She looked around, thinking that perhaps they were on the Valiant, that perhaps no time had passed. Maybe she dreamed all of it, the Doctor, the gun, and everything that happened after. She shook her head. No, this is the house, she reminded herself, not the Valiant. And he has returned, as strong as ever. 

He looked at her reflection in the mirror, not turning. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing. I’m fine.”

And then he did turn, and she tried not to step backwards, away from him, but she did. He shouldn’t be alive. She shot him, and he burned, and it was _not possible_ that he could be standing here, getting dressed as if he were an ordinary man.

He smiled. “Good. Because I have a job for you.”

 

_There are assistants who tend the machinery. “Sontaran technology,” one of them says as he adds something to the green liquid in the vat. She doesn’t know what that means._

_“Not the ring though; that’s something else again,” the other says, and he shudders._

_She ghosts around the house, but she can’t get away from the horrible droning hum of the machines. She leaves the house, and they watch her, but they let her go into the garden. She tries to leave the garden, and a man comes and firmly escorts her back to the house._

_“Got to keep you safe. Master’s orders.” She laughs until she can’t breathe._

 

He walked over and gently touched her face. “You look tired.” His voice was so loving, and she couldn’t help but lean into his hand. Lucy closed her eyes. This was the man she fell in love with, this gentle man, so clever, so funny. She would look at him and think that she was the luckiest woman in the world. Sometimes she still thought that. Other times she thought that she might be in hell, that she was dead and no one had had the courtesy to tell her yet.

He put his nose against her neck and inhaled. His fingers pressed harder into her cheek, and Lucy clutched his biceps. She wanted to pull him closer; she wanted to push him away. The Master’s tongue raked across her neck, and then Lucy felt his teeth, gentle at first, then painfully digging into the soft skin above her collarbone. Terror and desire in equal parts welled up and she gasped.

“You always taste like fear,” he said. “It makes me so hard.” Lucy’s hips involuntarily ground against his. 

 

 _She gets up the courage to approach the vat of green liquid. It is the middle of the night and the assistants are asleep. The smell is odd, sickeningly sweet and medicinal. Lucy approaches slowly, sliding her feet along the floor. When the cloned body bursts from below the surface of the liquid, faceless and horrible, she falls onto her bottom, her teeth coming together on her tongue. The blood wells in her mouth and she swallows it._

 

Suddenly, he pushed her away and walked back to the mirror, the little interlude apparently forgotten. Lucy sagged against the wall.

“As I was saying, I have a job for you.”

“What kind of job?”

“Reconnaissance,” the Master replied, rolling the word around in his mouth. “I can’t leave the protection of the telepathic shield, not until I’m ready for him to know. You can.”

“But … but he knows me. What if he sees me?”

“You won’t let him,” he said in a way that made it clear that she would not fail, not if she wanted to survive. 

“I don’t understand,” Lucy said, flinching away from him, although he made no move toward her. “What do you want me to do?”

The Master turned from the mirror and stared at her. Or was he staring through her? She wasn’t sure. “I want you to talk to his lover.”

 

_Weeks later they bring her to see him in their bedroom and she believes he will look like the faceless clone. She weeps silently as they pull her along, her hands trembling. He isn’t horrible though. He looks like himself, just pink and fresh. Perfect, pale skin and eyelashes resting against his cheeks. She continues to weep, but she thinks it might be from joy. That, or a different kind of terror entirely._

_The first time he can speak, he says to her, “You shot me.”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Excellent work, Lucy.”_

 

She shuddered. _Rose._ He meant Rose. Just thinking her name made Lucy squirm. It was the play they used to put on, and Lucy played the part of Rose. The Master would call her Rose and do things to her. He made the Doctor watch.

Lucy slid bonelessly to the floor, her eyes unfocused.

 

_His recovery to full health is slow, and he curses the lost time. He is a Time Lord, but he might as well be a human for as little as he can control time. He rails against the injustice of it all, against the fact that he must scrape and struggle just to be alive while the Doctor goes blithely on. He can sense him, he says, even through the shield that protects them from the Doctor sensing him._

_Nothing has changed, Lucy thinks. The Doctor is still all he thinks about._

 

The Master was still talking to her, not noticing or not caring about her reaction. “I need to get a feel for what he’s doing now. What he’s thinking about. Where he’s going. They’ll split up at some point, I’m sure, he was always one for wandering off and leaving his companions behind. Although …” He put a finger to the side of his mouth, considering. “He wasn’t fucking most of them. Still, doesn’t change his basic modus operandi, does it? He’ll swan off and you’ll talk to her. Make friends with her. Ask her who does her hair. Ask her where she gets her nails done. Ask her anything you think of. Just find out something I can use.”

Finally, Lucy looked up at him, pushing herself up into a standing position. “She’s not stupid. She’ll be suspicious.”

When he slapped her, she expected it and didn’t even flinch. “She _is_ stupid! Get her talking about him, she won’t be able to stop herself. She’s stupid because she’s blinded by love for him.” His smile was horrible, a mockery of a smile. “Like you are for me. My stupid, stupid Lucy.” He kissed her violently, and Lucy let her mind float away as she usually did. _Lucy Saxon has flown away. Lucy has flown the coop._


	5. Chapter 5

“But it made them happy,” Rose was saying as they left the TARDIS. “Why would you begrudge their right to believe what they want to believe?”

The Doctor closed the door, pulling on his coat and following her. “I never said they didn’t have a right to believe what they want to believe. Of course they do. But a giant turkey that has to lay their sun like a egg every day? That’s a bit ridiculous even for religion.”

“Well, granted, it is silly. But don’t you think it’s _all_ silly?” Rose grabbed his hand and threaded her fingers with his. They were walking down a weaving cobblestone street. The buildings on either side of them pressed close, almost seeming to lean out over their heads. The weather was damp and slightly chill, and Rose pulled her sweater closer around her shoulders. She peered up at the sky, wondering if she should have brought an umbrella.

“I do. But some religious imagery is more elegant, shall we say.” He scratched his neck. “Like the Earth on the back of the turtle. I quite like that one. Not that it accurately describes the reason for the Earth’s relative position in the solar system. It’s just a pleasing image is all. Not like that turkey rubbish.”

“Clearly, the Rhoolians were quite pleased with their turkey rubbish. And maybe they found it to be elegant.”

“I’m sure they did. But objectively, there are some things that are more elegant, more beautiful, and less silly than others.” He turned right at a crossing, stopped, looked around, then abruptly spun and headed in the opposite direction, dragging on Rose’s hand.

“Yes, according to your Time Lord sensibilities,” she retorted.

“According to the sensibilities of most sentient species across time and space. Sure, there are differences, variations in what people find beautiful. Fashions change, opinions shift. But it isn’t all relative. There are some objective measures of beauty among all bipedal humanoid species.”

“I thought we were talking about religion. Now we seem to be talking about whether galactic turkeys laying solar eggs is the new black.”

The Doctor grinned at her, evidently pleased with her clever comeback. “Religions go in and out of fashion faster than the lengths of women’s skirts sometimes.”

“I suppose that’s probably true.” She skipped a couple of times to catch him up. “Still, I liked the turkey. It was cute.”

“Here we are!” the Doctor proclaimed, rounding another corner and quickening his pace. He led Rose up some ornate marble steps and through a set of enormous doors into a vast open space.

Rose looked around, taking in her surroundings. “It’s a mall.”

“It isn’t just a mall!” he said, frowning. “It’s one of the largest shopping arenas in the system! 6800 stores in this quadrant alone!”

“Okay, it’s a really big mall,” she conceded, squeezing his hand. “What are we doing here, anyway? You need parts for your thingamawhatsis?”

“I assume you mean the thermal imaging device I’ve been modifying, and yes, I need something for that, and a few other things. All of it deadly dull. I thought you might want to do a little shopping of your own in the meantime,” he said, fishing in one of his coat pockets and producing a credit chip. “We can meet up in about three hours. There are restaurants here you wouldn’t believe. I’ve always wanted to try one of those anti-gravity restaurants.”

“Anti-gravity restaurants?” she said. “That sounds needlessly messy.”

“They give you bibs. Anyway, three hours, is that okay?”

“Sure,” Rose said, smiling and taking the credit chip. “Meet right here?”

“Yup.” He leaned down and kissed her. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.” She watched him trot off and she waved, but he didn’t see her. 

Rose saw a directory several yards away so she went and examined it, then happily headed off in the direction of the nearest shoe store. 

 

*** 

 

Two hours later, Rose found her way to a bench to sit for a moment. She was pleased with her purchases so far; a pair of high-heeled sandals that she wasn’t sure she had anything to match at the moment but were too cute to resist, and two tops which, among the sixteen or seventeen she had tried on, were the most flattering. As she sat watching the parade of shoppers, a blonde woman with wide eyes sat down next to her. The woman had no shopping bags and no purse. Her hair was long, her features delicate, her wrists so thin as to be almost birdlike. She smiled half-heartedly at Rose. “Do you mind if I sit here with you? My handbag was just stolen and I’m waiting for my husband to come pick me up. I’m a little shaken; I’m afraid to be alone.” Her hands were indeed trembling, Rose could see, and her heart went out to the stranger.

“Wow, I’m sorry you got robbed,” Rose said. “You weren’t hurt or anything, were ya?”

“No, no, nothing like that. Just a pickpocket, cut the strap and ran off with it before I knew what was happening.”

“Still, it’s scary.” Rose held out her hand. “I’m Rose.”

“Lucy,” the woman responded, taking Rose’s hand. Her grip was weak, barely a grip at all. 

“Hi.” Rose tried to smile encouragingly. “How long will you have to wait, do you think?”

“I’m not sure.” Lucy paused, then cleared her throat. “Are you shopping here alone?”

“No, my boyfriend is here somewhere.” She grimaced internally. Although she called him that often when talking to other people that they met on their travels, Rose always felt that “boyfriend” was a ridiculous epithet for the Time Lord with whom she shared her life. Nothing else was any better, though. “Significant other” was a mouthful and often didn’t translate properly, “lover” seemed like a little too much information to share with strangers, and “friend” was both inadequate and reminded her of the early years when she called him friend even as she longed to be more. “We’re supposed to meet back up in about an hour and go to dinner.”

“That’s nice.”

“Maybe when your husband gets here, he can take you out, yeah? Might make you feel better after your scare.”

“I don’t think so.” Lucy took a deep breath. “You did some successful shopping, I see,” she said, indicating Rose’s packages.

“A bit, just some shoes and a couple of tops, nothing major. I wasn’t after anything in particular, just killing time while, um, John gets what he came for.”

“What does he do for a living, your boyfriend?” 

“Oh, we sort of just travel together.” There were things about the way this Lucy was behaving that were putting Rose on alert. Lucy had yet to meet Rose’s eyes, and she sat as far to the opposite side of the bench as she possibly could. Rose wrote it off to the fright she had just experienced, and tried to be friendly. “He’s a freelancer.”

“How long have you been dating?” asked Lucy.

“About four years. I mean, I’ve known him longer than that. We were friends for a couple of years, then we were separated for a couple of years, and now we’re together.”

“But you aren’t married?”

Rose was never sure what to expect when she talked to people she met about her relationship with the Doctor. In some times and cultures, marriage didn’t exist. In others, they were at risk for imprisonment for being unmarried and kissing in public. She didn’t know where along that continuum Lucy fell. “Um …no, not married,” she admitted.

“You don’t want to marry him?” Lucy asked. 

“No, I didn’t say that,” Rose said, feeling flustered. “It’s just … we’re not … it’s not really necessary,” she finished lamely.

Lucy nodded. “He isn’t the one,” she said.

“What do you mean, _the one_?”

“Your one true love.”

Rose smiled. “If you knew what we’ve been through to be together, you wouldn’t say that. How about you? How long have you been married?”

Lucy looked panicked, almost like she didn’t know the answer to the question. “Six years,” she said finally. 

“Has the time flown by, or does it feel like an eternity?” Rose joked. 

Lucy just stared at her, or rather, at a point just to the left of Rose’s face. It was disconcerting, to say the least. “I love my husband very much,” she answered eventually.

“Great.” They sat in silence for a few minutes, Rose unsure what to say to this strange woman. She didn’t want to leave her alone though, as she did seem genuinely frightened. 

“Where are you travelling to next?” Lucy asked.

“I dunno. He usually picks the destination, or sometimes he just, you know, throws a dart at a map, as it were. I usually don’t know where we’re going until we get there.”

“And you like it that way?” asked Lucy.

“Oh, yeah, it’s brilliant!” Rose said, grinning. “I love it.”

“So you don’t know where you’re headed next.”

“Nope. Or the time after that, or the time after that. Although we do visit my home planet with some regularity. Might do that again in a few months, catch up with friends.”

“You have family and friends waiting for you at home?” asked Lucy.

“Not family, no. Just a few friends. People who used to travel with him before, that sort of thing.”

“Previous lovers?”

“Uh, no, nothing like that. Just friends. Friends of both of us.” Rose looked around, wondering when this off-putting woman’s husband would arrive and she would be free to leave her.

“Do you think you’ll ever settle down?” 

Rose shook her head. “Nah. We’re happy this way. Think we’ll always travel.” She frowned slightly and muttered “as long as I’m young enough to keep up with him, anyway.”

Lucy raked a hand through her hair and as she did, her sleeve fell back, revealing bruises on her forearm. Rose didn’t get that good a look, but she thought they looked like finger marks. “Are you sure you aren’t hurt?” Rose asked. “Not hurt by … anyone?”

Lucy’s head whipped around and she stared at Rose, then she looked around nervously. “What do you mean?”

“No, it’s nothing, it’s just … it’s nothing. But if there’s anything I can help you with, you tell me, yeah?”

Lucy looked even more frightened, if that was possible. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it with a snap, then opened it again. No sound came out. Finally she managed to squeak out, “I’m fine.”

“Okay.” Rose looked around and spotted a brief flash of a familiar brown coat coming through the crowd of shoppers, still a good distance away. “Oh, there he is!” she said, relieved. She stood up and waved, trying to catch the Doctor’s attention. She then heard and felt a snap of electricity behind her. Turning, she found that Lucy had disappeared. She stood on tiptoe, peering into the crowd in the opposite direction from the Doctor’s returning figure, but she couldn’t spot her.

Rose felt a tap on her shoulder and turned around to find the grinning Doctor standing practically on top of her. He saw the look on her face and frowned. “What’s the matter?”

She shook her head. “There was this woman. She …” Rose turned around again. “She vanished, or ran off or something.”

“Literally vanished or figuratively?” he asked.

“I don’t know. If it was figuratively, she ran very fast. And there was this … I don’t know, some kind of sound.”

The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and adjusted the setting, then scanned the bench. His frown deepened. “I’d say it was literal. Someone’s used a vortex manipulator here, and recently.”

“What, you mean she was a time traveller? A time agent or something?”

“Or something, yeah. What did she say?” 

Rose described as much as she could remember about the encounter, both what Lucy had said and what Rose had observed about her behaviour and the bruises on her arm.

“And her name was Lucy, you said?” he asked.

“Yeah, why?”

He shook his head. “No reason. Probably a coincidence.”

“Oh no, you don’t. What?”

The Doctor met her eyes. “That was the Master’s wife’s name. Lucy. And she looked sort of the way you described.”

“Well, what happened to her?”

“Jack turned her over to the authorities,” he said.

“And what happened after that?”

He shrugged. “I don’t actually know.”

“Well, maybe we should look into it?”

“Good idea.” The Doctor took her hand and started walking. “But first, dinner. Then, a night’s rest for you. And _then_ , I have a special trip planned.”

“Ooh, special trip? Where are we going?” Rose asked, matching his smile with one of her own.

“You’ll have to wait for tomorrow to find that out.”

“Okay, Mr. Enigmatic. I forgot to ask, did you find what you needed?”

The Doctor patted his breast pocket. “Yup.”


	6. Chapter 6

Rose stepped out of the TARDIS onto a carpet of green grass. It was warm and sunny, and the air smelled of apples.

“This is New Earth,” she said, turning to look at the smiling Doctor.

“Yup.”

“You brought us to New Earth.”

“Yup. About, oh, a week after we left it last.”

“How come?”

He took off his coat and spread it on the ground, then sat down and patted a space beside him. “Because when I think of those early days, and how I loved you so much it made my hearts ache, sitting here with you is one of the times I think of.”

Rose said down and kissed him. “That’s very romantic.”

“It is, isn’t it?” The Doctor reached out and took her face in his hands and gently, ever so gently returned her kiss. The way he moved his mouth over hers made her gasp. It seemed almost reverent, worshipful, what he was doing. It took her breath away. When he pulled away and looked at her, she thought she might drown in his eyes.

“Wow.” Rose worked at getting her breathing back under control. “That was a kiss.”

He just smiled, and turned to look out at the water. Rose put her head on his shoulder and they sat together silently for a while.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” the Doctor said, and Rose recognized the tone in his voice. It was a tone that was purposefully impassive, used when he was concealing something bad, like fear or anger, under a veil of calm.

She lifted her head. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, but there’s something I need to tell you. Something from years ago that I never told you before.”

“What?”

“While you were gone, during the time that you were gone, a lot of bad things happened. Most of it I’ve already told you about; the Master, and that year, and Martha … but there’s one thing I held back.” He paused, and took a deep breath.

“When I was human, in 1913, something happened.”

She smiled nervously. “If this is about that nurse that you fell for, you already told me about that too, remember?”

“No, it isn’t that. It’s what I did after I stopped being human.” He studied his hands for a long moment. Rose waited for him to resume. “The family, the ones who were pursuing me. I stopped them, I blew up their ship. Without it, they were pretty much helpless.”

“And you let them die, you told me,” she said.

“No, I didn’t. I lied about that.” The tone in his voice created a spiral of fear in Rose’s stomach. She felt her palms sweating as she pressed her hands against the lining of his coat.

“The whole reason they wanted me was so that they could live forever, wreaking havoc across the stars. So I let them live forever.”

“What do you mean, you let them live forever?”

“I … I trapped them. I trapped them in different ways, but the outcome was the same. They are … not exactly living forever, but existing forever. In a kind of limbo, dead and not dead.” He looked at her then, the expression in his eyes haunted. “It was vengeance on my part, pure and simple. They destroyed innocent people to get to me, and it was my fault, and I was angry. I was so very angry, Rose. That whole year, after I lost you, I was so angry all the time. I finally just snapped, I think.” He scrubbed his hands over his face.

Rose put her hand on his knee and spoke softly. “You said it yourself, they killed innocent people. They would have killed many, many more if you hadn’t stopped them, and for once you weren’t merciful. You punished them for what they did.”

“Exactly, and I can’t allow myself to be that man. I have an enormous capacity for vengeance, Rose. It’s always there, under the surface, and I don’t act on it. I spurn violence precisely because I know that given rein, I am capable of terrible violence.” 

“I’ve known what you can be capable of for a long, long time. The Oncoming Storm. And almost always, you don’t succumb to it, that power that you have. This time you did.” She watched him for a moment. “And you’re sorry,” she said. The Doctor nodded, looking again out over the horizon. “The fact that you regret it is part of what makes you the man I love. And I forgive you.”

He looked at her, desperate. “I can’t say I’ll never do anything like that again.”

“I know,” Rose said, pulling him into an embrace. “But we just have to take things as they come, don’t we? And I’m here to help you, remember?” He squeezed her tight and Rose hung on, stroking his hair and back. They stayed that way for long minutes, clinging to each other. She felt him take several deep breaths and his shoulders relaxed. “You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. Thanks to you.” 

Finally Rose pulled away and looked at him, curious. “Why now? Why did you feel the need to confess all that to me now?”

“Because I wanted you to know the worst of me before I did this.” During most of the time that he had been talking to her, he had been looking out at the ocean. Now he turned his body around fully and looked at her straight on. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the future. Well, actually, obviously, I think about the future all the time,” he amended, one side of his mouth quirking up. “What I mean is that I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about _my_ future. _Our_ future. And it’s because I don’t want to. I lost you once, Rose, and it just about killed me. And someday I’m going to lose you again. It may be a long time away, but I’m going to lose you again. Thinking about that, it drives me just a little bit mad.”

She put a hand on his. “I know, you don’t have to … Whatever this is about, you don’t have to think about that.”

“But it’s not fair to you, is it? You deserve better from me. You deserve to hear me say what I feel for you.”

“I do hear it. You tell me you love me all the time.”

He shook his head. “That isn’t enough. There’s so much more, Rose. Of course, I love you. But, I … “ He reached out and touched her face, swallowing. “I want to be your partner all of your life. For all of my life that I can share with you. These last four years, you’ve made me so happy, and I want you to know that I’m committed to you.”

Rose’s breath hitched. He so rarely talked to her this way, with his emotions laid so bare. “What brought this on?”

“Well, I guess something Donna said brought it on, which is fitting. She was the one who practically pushed me into your bed that first time,” he said. “It’s just, she made me realize something.” He took a deep breath. “I want to be married to you, Rose. I want to be your husband.”

Her mouth fell open. “What?”

The Doctor cleared his throat. “Will you marry me?” he asked, his voice small and hesitant.

Whatever Rose had been expecting, it wasn’t this. She was so shocked that she actually saw spots in front of her eyes and felt a strange floating sensation in her head. “You … you want … _really_?”

The Doctor flushed. “I’m sorry, maybe this was too much,” he said, withdrawing his hand.

“No!” Rose shouted, desperate to make him understand, but the words just weren’t coming properly to her addled brain. “No, I didn’t mean … It’s wonderful, it’s …” She shook her head to try to clear it. “Yes. Yes, I want to marry you.”

He exhaled with relief, grinning. “We can do it any way you want. We can have a human wedding on Earth, but I know you aren’t too enamoured of that idea, and frankly, neither am I. But … the Burchonian people of Telerui have a fascinating wedding ceremony—”

“I don’t know if I really want a wedding,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I just know that I want to be your wife.”

“Rose,” he gasped, and pulled her into a hug. They clung to each other for several moments, until the Doctor pulled away. “Yesterday, at the market, I had these made.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box, which he shyly handed over.

Rose took it and opened it. Inside were two rings, one larger than the other. They looked sort of like platinum, but darker and shinier, almost like mercury if it were solid. She pulled the larger one out to examine it. Inscribed on the band, inside and out, was the distinctive, circular writing that she immediately recognized as Gallifreyan.

“This is gorgeous. What does it say?” she asked.

He took the box from her and retrieved the other ring, then pulled out his glasses and put them on. “It says, loosely translated, ‘You and I, united for all time and through all space’.”

“That’s lovely,” she said. “And true.”

“Will you wear it?”

Rose leaned over and kissed him. “You don’t need to ask that. Of course I will.”

“There are more different kinds of wedding ceremonies than there are stars in the sky. And we travel through time and space, so we can take our pick, really. Let’s pick this, today, right here, right now.”

She looked around, not quite sure what he what he was going to do. “Okay.”

He got up on his knees, replacing his glasses in his pocket. “Face me, like this,” he said. He took both of her hands, looking into her eyes. “However much time we have remaining, I promise to spend it with you. I will cherish every day that we have together, be it thirty days or thirty thousand. You are my wife, Rose Marion Tyler.” He took her left hand and slipped the ring on her finger. “This ring symbolizes that union.” He smiled, then leaned over and kissed her on the lips. “Your turn.”

“What should I say?” she asked, her heart racing.

“Anything you like.”

Suddenly shy, she looked down at the man’s ring that she still clutched in her right hand. Rose thought for a minute. “You are … the most amazing man in the universe. I was yours from the moment that you grabbed my hand and told me to run. And I’ll be yours until the day I die. No matter what happens, no matter what trials we have in store, I’ll always be yours.” She blinked at the tears that were unexpectedly in her eyes. “You are my husband, Doctor, and this ring symbolizes that union.” She took his left hand in hers and pushed the ring onto his finger. She realized as she did so that his hands were trembling. Rose took his face in both of her hands and kissed him, a simple press of her lips to his. Breaking the kiss, the Doctor put his forehead against hers. They stayed that way for a long time, just breathing in concert, their eyes closed. 

Rose finally broke the spell, sitting back on her heels. “Are we married then?” she asked, looking at her hand.

“Yes. I say we are.”

“And there’s no higher authority, right?” she smirked.

“Nope.”

“Then do you know what I really want to do now?” She reached over and took his left hand with her own.

“What do you want to do now?”

She grinned, then leaned over and gave him a deep, open-mouthed kiss. “I want to have a honeymoon.”


	7. Chapter 7

“Do you realize, we’ve never just stayed in a hotel before?” Rose skipped across the room, opening the door to the balcony and ducking out.

“We have too, lots of times,” the Doctor said, dropping their bags at the foot of the bed.

Rose stuck her head back into the room. “Yes, we’ve stayed in inns and hotels and stuff, but only because we were trying to blend in and solve a mystery, or because we had mislaid the TARDIS or something. We’ve never stayed in a hotel just … to stay in a hotel.”

The Doctor pondered this, rubbing the back of his neck. “I suppose that’s true,” he said, joining her on the balcony. “Well, now _that_ is what I call a view!” The hotel they were staying at was built directly into the wall of a verdant canyon. Across from them, a waterfall dropped hundreds of yards and disappeared into the mist at the bottom. Birds wheeled in the sky. There was even a rainbow; it seemed almost too beautiful, like the cover of a very bad fantasy novel. 

“It is lovely,” Rose agreed, leaning against the railing. “You did quite nicely, Mr. Tyler.”

“Didn’t I say not to call me that?” he whined.

“You tell me your surname, I’ll use it,” she said, her tongue between her teeth.

“Time Lords didn’t have surnames.”

“Oh well,” she said, taking his hands and swinging them. “You’ll have to have mine then. I can say Dr. Tyler if that makes you feel better.”

He pouted at her. “See, I’ve given you an inch, and you’ve taken a mile.”

“Yup. It’s all domesticity all the time now,” she said, smirking at him. “We’ll be arguing about whose turn it is to do the washing up. I’ll accuse you of spending too much time at the office. ‘Why don’t you ever bring me flowers anymore?’ I’ll say. And of course, there will be much less sex.”

“All right, _that_ is where I draw the line.” The Doctor grabbed her hips and pulled them flush against his own. “You can domesticate me all you like,” he said, planting an open-mouthed kiss on her jaw line, “and nag me about the washing up … ” Another kiss, this time on her neck. “But I do _not_ accept the fact that there will be less sex.”

“Well, that’s fair,” Rose murmured, wrapping her arms around him.

The Doctor chuckled softly and continued kissing her. “I’m glad we’re in agreement then.”

“Mm hmm, definitely. In fact,” Rose said, grinning at him, “just to prove my good faith … ” She dropped to her knees and started working the fastening on his trousers. 

“Oh. Yes, quite,” he gasped. Rose wasted no time; she freed his cock and started swirling her tongue around it, teasing. The Doctor grasped the railing of the balcony for support. “You know,” he said, glancing around, “it’s possible that, ahh yes … it’s possible that someone in another room might see us.”

Rose ran her tongue along the underside of his length, from base to tip, then looked up at him. “Do you want me to stop?” 

“N—no.”

“Good.” She took him entirely into her mouth, sucking and working him in and out.

The hand that wasn’t gripping the railing came up and threaded into her hair, exerting only the slightest pressure on the back of her head. “Ah, Rose, that’s … so good. I love the feel of your mouth.” She could tell from the sound of his words that his jaw was clenched. 

Rose grasped his hips, her fingers digging into the fabric of his trousers. Every so often she would release him with a pop and spend some time teasing him with long licks of her tongue before she took his cock fully into her mouth again and returned to her steady, torturous pace. She felt his hand clenching in her hair, his breath coming in harsh gasps. She cut her eyes to the side and saw his hand on the balcony rail, his knuckles white. She felt his hips moving slightly, his whole body tensed against the impulse to thrust hard into her mouth. Knowing that he was getting close, Rose exerted more pressure and sped up. Another minute and he was moaning wordlessly, which pleased her immensely. The Doctor incoherent, even on the edge of orgasm, was a rare treat. When he came, Rose swallowed quickly, gradually slowing her movements to draw out his pleasure. She finally let him slide from her mouth and allowed herself to be pulled up into his arms.

“You’re too good at that,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “I was going to stop you and take you to bed. Somewhere, I seem to have I lost my train of thought.”

Rose giggled as she helped him do up his trousers. “That’s okay, a clever bloke like you, I’m sure you can think of a way to make things fair.”

“Oh, indeed,” he rasped, reaching down and picking her up suddenly. Rose squealed as he brought her back into the room and dropped her to the bed. The Doctor pounced on her, kissing her soundly, before drawing back and attacking the button at her waist, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth in concentration. Rose kicked off her shoes as he tugged on her trousers, and very quickly she was completely bare from the waist down.

The Doctor sat back on his heels at the foot of the bed and smiled at her, a lazy, sexy smile that promised a great deal. He lifted her right foot from the bed and kissed her ankle, gradually working his way up the inside of her leg. Rose closed her eyes, concentrating on the feel of his lips and tongue on her skin. She breathed deeply, trying to keep her muscles relaxed, trying not to anticipate what was coming. His movement was achingly slow. When he reached the top of her thigh, he ran his tongue along the crease where her leg met her pelvis, and she couldn’t stop her hips from rising from the mattress toward his mouth. 

“Patience,” he murmured as he scooted back down the bed and began the same process on her left leg. 

“You’re evil,” Rose grumbled. 

The Doctor just laughed and continued his slow, wet progress up her leg, his mouth curved into a smile. “You’re beautiful. My wife.”

Rose’s heart clenched at those words. She wasn’t sure when hearing him call her wife would stop being a thrill, but she hoped not soon.

He licked his way up the same crease on the other hip and then dragged his lips across her stomach, swirling his tongue around her navel. Rose threaded her fingers into his hair. “I love you,” he whispered. “I would spend all night doing this if I had the patience.”

“You’d better not,” Rose warned.

“Well,” he said, his nose brushing through the curls of hair between her legs, “fortunately for you, I do not have the patience.” His tongue barely touched her clit, making her twitch. “Because the only thing I like better than bringing you to a simmer like this … ” His tongue touched her again with just slightly more pressure and she gasped. “ … is making you boil over.” He raked the flat of his tongue from her entrance up to her clit, hard, and Rose felt her eyes roll back in her head. He repeated the motion several times, and Rose couldn’t help but rock her hips against his mouth as she lost herself to the pleasure of it. 

The Doctor was a man of many talents, but Rose thought that it was likely that there was no one in the universe better at this than he was. He seemed to enjoy doing it as much as she enjoyed receiving it. She heard him moan his appreciation of her. He held her hips down with his hands as he continued to take her apart with his lips and teeth and tongue. Rose panted audibly.

She felt the start of an orgasm coiling through her. The Doctor seemed to sense it, and he thrust two fingers inside her, maintaining the same rhythm with his hand that he had established with his tongue. Rose lost all control of her reactions, gasping and moaning and moving erratically, her fingers and toes digging into the bedding. She screamed when she came, an orgasm that seemed to draw out for a moment outside of time. As she coasted down from the high, she wondered idly if the room was soundproof. Perhaps, she thought, looking at the open door to the balcony, her scream had echoed through the canyon. Rose giggled.

“What?” the Doctor asked as he crawled up her body and stretched out along side her. He was fully clothed, although he had chosen to forgo a tie that day, but this also seemed sort of funny and she giggled again. 

“Just wondering if the whole hotel heard me just now,” she said, kissing the end of his nose.

“Well, maybe, but you are on your honeymoon, after all. You’re allowed.”

“Oh, good.”

The Doctor reached over and grabbed a book of hotel services from the nightstand. “So, what do you feel like for dinner? There are several restaurants inside the hotel, all of them three or four star.”

“You mean we’re going to leave the room?” Rose said, snuggling into the crook of his arm.

“If we aren’t, why did you pack all of those clothes?”

Rose pretended to be put out. “Okay, fine. But I’m not done with you tonight, mister.”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “No, you certainly aren’t.”

 

*** 

 

“So when are we going to tell people?” Rose asked as she refilled their wine glasses. Candlelight reflected off of the bottle, throwing glints of green across the white tablecloth. 

“Tell people what?” The Doctor put a large bite of his fish into his mouth.

She rolled her eyes. “That we’re married, you silly alien.”

“Aw, do we have to?” 

“Of course we have to. I mean, I _want_ to, don’t you?” Rose said as she cut into her steak.

The Doctor sighed. “Do you know what Donna is going to do to us when she finds out that we got married without having a wedding that we invited anyone to?”

“She’ll be happy for us,” Rose said patiently.

“She’ll kill me. You’ll have to get used to a new version of me as your husband.”

Rose tapped a finger on her lips. “Well, what would he look like? Maybe I’m tired of this model.”

“Oh, ha ha.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Rose sipped her wine. “If you regenerated … is it possible that the new you wouldn’t love me anymore?”

“No,” he answered simply.

“That’s it, just no?”

“Rose, you know that I loved you before I regenerated the last time. That didn’t change.”

“But, you know, could it have? I mean, you’ve said that some of your regenerations had different libidos, or weren’t attracted to girls. What if you regenerated and you were gay?”

“I’d still love you, Rose. I’d just be gay with one exception, and that would be you. You know, like that Ianto chap is, straight with one exception.”

“Yes, but that exception is Jack. Everyone fancies Jack, even you.”

“In your dreams,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.

“You better believe it.” Rose grinned and stuck out her tongue at him.

“Wait, hang on a tick,” the Doctor said, putting down his fork. “Is this something that’s been bothering you? That I might regenerate and what, toss you aside? Why haven’t you asked me before about this?”

“Because I don’t like to think about it, you regenerating. First of all, it means something terrible has happened to you. It might mean I have to watch you die, either that or you’ve died alone, and I don’t know which is worse. And I’ll know intellectually that it’s still you, but I’ll mourn you; I did before, and we weren’t even lovers then. I can’t even imagine how much it will hurt next time.”

“I know. And I’m sorry. But it’s better than me dying permanently, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is, it’s just … I think about it sometimes. I have these morbid daydreams, I can’t help it.”

“I know what those are like,” he said, his voice guarded and dark.

Now that she had started talking about it, Rose found she couldn’t stop. “And things about you will change. Your personality will be different! And you won’t dress the same way; you probably won’t wear those stupid trainers anymore, or, or the glasses …” She felt tears stinging her eyes.

“Oi! Stupid?” He said with mock horror.

“I love your trainers,” Rose sighed. “And your hair. You won’t have the same hair. You have … _really_ great hair.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” he said, preening, then he turned serious. “I’ll look completely different, Rose. That worries you too, doesn’t it?”

“Of course it does, but I’m not shallow, I’m not going to dump you if you aren’t as …” 

“I know that.” He took a bite of his food. “I don’t think you have to worry too much about it, though.”

“Why not?”

“Didn’t you ever wonder why, when I regenerated before, that I ended up looking like this? Or why I have a London accent that’s a lot like yours?”

“No.”

“Some Time Lords had the ability to completely control their regenerations. It was like shopping in a catalogue for them. Me, I was rubbish at it, never knew what I was going to end up looking like. But I think last time, I don’t know, maybe it was the fact that you were there, or maybe it was the way I felt about you, but you shaped who I became.”

Rose was shocked at this revelation. “I did?”

“I think so. We sort of fit, you and me, don’t we? Physically, and our personality quirks; also, as it turns out, sexually. I’m not sure that’s just a happy coincidence.”

“Wow. I never … wow.” Rose thought for a minute. “So maybe you’ll look almost the same.”

He shrugged. “Well, probably not. But I don’t think I’ll be gay, or asexual, or unattractive to you, either.”

“Oh. Well, that’s good then.”

“Anyway, enough of this depressing talk!” he said, picking up the wine bottle and emptying the rest of it into their glasses. “Nobody at this table is going to be dying or regenerating for a really long time, right? So let’s talk about happy things.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I don’t know. Puppies? Balloons? Raindrops on roses—”

“Don’t start,” Rose groaned, sticking her fingers in her water glass and flicking droplets at him. The Doctor retaliated, and they laughed, and the rest of dinner passed happily. Rose tucked her morbid thoughts away in their usual place in her mind, to be pulled out and mulled over again the next time the Doctor got into a scrape and came close to losing his life. It was the curse of the wife of a Time Lord, she thought.


	8. Chapter 8

The Doctor opened the door to their room and Rose half-tumbled inside. “You drank too much,” he said.

Rose dropped onto the sofa and pulled off one of her high-heeled sandals. “I did not. I drank just the right amount.”

“Oh, and what is the right amount, pray tell?”

“Enough to feel warm and sexy and uninhibited, not enough to fall asleep prematurely or end up hugging the toilet.”

“Which you’ve done at least once, as I recall,” he said.

She took off the other shoe and threw it in his general direction. “That was a long time ago, we shan’t speak of it.”

“Agreed.” He held his hands out. “Now come here and tell me more about these sexy, uninhibited feelings.”

Rose stood and held up a finger. “Hold that thought, I have to pee.” With that, she dashed into the en suite.

Laughing, the Doctor shook his head, then went over to the bed and sat down on it. As he untied his shoelaces, he wondered for perhaps the thousandth time in the last day just how he had ended up with this life. He was now, inexplicably, someone’s husband. It was surreal, and left him feeling a little drunk. There had been many times since the Time War when pain and loss had so flooded him that he thought he would drown in it. Instead, he became accustomed to it. Now he found that sometime in the last few years, he had become accustomed to happiness. 

He undressed, then pulled back the covers and slipped between the crisp, white sheets. Crossing his arms above his head, he stared at the ceiling. He had fallen in love with Rose quite suddenly, back when he wore a different face and his scars from the war were much more fresh and raw. He was so lonely, and he had gladly poured her into every empty place inside him. He hadn’t called it romantic love back then, not even to himself, but it had been. But even if he had admitted it, he never would have considered that she felt the same way for him, not for a moment.

It wasn’t until New Earth and Cassandra that he realized that Rose was, at the very least, attracted to him physically. He had studied his new self in the mirror after that for longer than he’d like to admit, looking for what she saw in him, trying to feel concerned but mostly feeling pleased. It was mutual, he had realized. She was beautiful, he had always thought so, but now in this new body he discovered that he was physically responding to her. He found himself standing too close to her and Rose allowing it, possibly enjoying it. And then on the street on Earth one night, fresh from Sarah Jane’s accusing eyes, he realized that he loved Rose, and not just as his friend. It had progressed way beyond that and he had failed to stop it, failed to rein himself in. He had gone and violated one of the worst taboos of his dead society, and he had fallen in love with a human. There had been only one thing for it; he had thrown up every barrier between them that he could think of. Mickey. Reinette. He had jumped at Reinette like a drowning man for a life raft. There was a strange safety in her, this brazen, sexy woman that he wanted but did not love.

In the long run, none of it mattered. Things pulled them apart but he and Rose sprang back together, the bonds between them stronger than ever. He found excuses to touch her, enjoying the crackle of electricity between them. He started to like it, being in love with her. He almost acted on it half a hundred times, but the ancient rules of his people and the fear of defiling this young girl with the depth of his hidden sorrow stopped him. He was the last Time Lord in existence, he thought, and if he didn’t hold to some piece of that, then there really would be nothing left. 

After he lost Rose, he cursed his restraint. If he had given in and told her he loved her, if he had taken her to bed and made her his, then at least he would have had those memories to cherish during the years without her. Instead, he obsessed over what he hadn’t had the courage to do, what he hadn’t had the courage to say. Even when she came back to him, he had almost screwed it up and it had taken Donna to shake some sense into him. He owed so much to Donna; he could spend a lifetime trying to repay her for everything she had done for him and it would never be enough.

That was when this new life, full of joy and love, had started: the night that he first told Rose he loved her. The night he showed her he loved her with his body. He had realized that loving her didn’t lessen who he was, it strengthened it. He was the last of the Time Lords, yes, but he was also a man, and the two weren’t mutually exclusive.

Rose emerged from the bathroom and stood in the doorway, smirking at him. Her dark blue dress had been replaced with a sinfully revealing nightie that he was surprised he’d never seen before. Its ivory colour gave her skin a warm glow. It was extremely short and sheer, and he could see both the circles of her nipples and the hair between her legs through it. In theory, he thought, this yielded the garment somewhat useless, except that as he looked at her, he found that his body was responding to the sight quite immediately. Perhaps not useless, he amended.

“You like, I take it?” Her question made him realize that his mouth was hanging open, and he closed it with a snap.

“Come here and I’ll show you how much.”

She glided over and crawled under the covers. “Hi,” she said, and kissed him. Her mouth tasted like the chocolate dessert she’d eaten at the restaurant. He pushed his tongue around hers, savouring the flavour and warmth of her. Rose responded immediately, moulding her body over his. He ran his hands up and down over the sheer fabric on her back, then down to her bare bottom. Rose moaned into his mouth. 

She rolled onto her side, pulling him with her. He stopped kissing her and just looked at her for a moment, this woman who had changed his life so completely. Her warm, brown eyes, her full lips, her creamy skin – it was all so familiar and yet he was entirely in awe of her. Smiling, she reached out to touch his face. She dragged the backs of her fingers across his rough cheek and his sideburn and combed through his hair. He leaned down and kissed her, just pressing his lips against hers. Time stopped. This was his wife, and it was miraculous. 

Rose nudged gently at his lips with hers, coaxing his mouth open. Kissing her was so automatic, the rhythm of it so engrained, that it was easy to take for granted how perfect it was. He focused on every movement of her lips and tongue, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her tight against him. The mood shifted, and soon their kisses became desperate, full of desire and want. Rose entwined her legs with his. She dragged her mouth down to his throat, to his chest. His hearts pounded. The Doctor let his eyes fall closed, and he ran a hand over every part of her that he could reach. 

“You’re very quiet tonight,” she commented.

He smiled. “Just savouring everything, I guess.”

“I feel a little like we’ve never done this before,” Rose whispered.

“Hmm. I think I know what you mean.”

“Why is that, do you think?” She rested her head on her arm and regarded him. “Before, if someone had asked me if being married to you would change anything, I would have said no. We already shared everything. But now,” she said, putting a hand on his chest, “I do feel different, and I’m not sure why.”

“It’s because vows matter. To think to yourself that you love someone and that you’ll stay with them forever is one thing. To swear it is quite another. Words have power. The symbols of those words,” he said, waggling his left hand, “have power.”

“I’m really glad we did this,” she said, looking at her own ring. 

“Me too,” he said, sitting up. “C’mere,” he beckoned. When she arose, he reached down and pulled the nightgown up and over her head. “I love this, so don’t let me discourage you from wearing it again. Often. Just now though,” he said, running a hand from her waist to the side of her breast, “I want to feel all of you against me.” Rose shivered in response, then lay back on the bed, pulling him onto her.

There was something about that first moment when their naked bodies came together that he had never gotten used to, no matter how many times they had done this. He hoped he never would. Rose’s hands came up to his face and she pulled him into another long, wet kiss. He felt her breasts crushed against him, her thighs squeezing his hips. 

“Oh,” she cried, grinding into him, “I really need you _now_.”

The Doctor raised up on his arms, finding her entrance just by moving his hips. He pushed into her slowly, inch by inch, until he was buried completely inside. She was warm and wet and perfect. He forced his eyes to stay open so that he could watch the pleasure wash over her beautiful face. “I love you,” he whispered.

“I love you. Always,” she gasped as he pulled out and pushed into her again. He set a slow pace with long thrusts, and she met each one with a rise of her own hips. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her bottom lip between her teeth.

“Look at me,” he said, and her eyes snapped open. “I could never, if I had my whole life, get enough of this. Get enough of you.” He continued moving in her as he talked. He felt his tightly held control starting to unravel. Rose was moaning, clutching at his back. “Thank you,” he said, not sure exactly what he was thanking her for. Perhaps everything.

“Stop, I don’t want …” she gasped suddenly. He stilled over her. “I don’t want to come yet, I’m enjoying this too much for it to be over.”

He pulled out of her completely and lay down at her side. They kissed each other with sweet, teasing touches of lips and tongue. She touched his cock, still slick from her body, lazily stroking him up and down. His hips bucked involuntarily, and he smiled. “You aren’t going to be able to prolong this much if you do that.” He removed her hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing her open palm. It tasted of sex, which was in and of itself almost painfully erotic.

The Doctor reached down and touched her, feeling how incredibly wet she was, how soft and pliant from their lovemaking. Every gentle stroke of his fingers made Rose moan desperately; she was still very close, and was revelling in the thrill of hanging as near to the precipice as she dared. He took his hand away to let her relax.

“I love you,” he whispered, “so much.” He knew he was repeating himself but he couldn’t stop telling her.

“Yes,” she breathed. Without warning, she pushed him onto his back, straddling him and taking his cock inside her quickly.

“I thought you wanted—” 

“Can’t wait.” Rose reached out blindly and seized his hand, bringing it up to her head, pressing his fingers to her temple.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded. “Please. Need all of you.”

He very gently probed into her mind with his own, careful to shield her from the entirety of him. It wasn’t something they did often; Rose sometimes found it to be too much, too overwhelming, to have their thoughts entwined while they made love. Other times she begged him for it. 

He felt the world tilt as he fell into her, experiencing with a rush the shreds of her control, the feeling of being filled by him, the heavy bounce of her breasts as she moved. He was himself and he was her. He opened his eyes and he could see Rose, he closed his eyes and could see himself. It was aching pleasure, doubling back and spiralling, a chain reaction, feeding on itself. In no time she was coming, shouting, and the feel of it inside his mind hurtled him into his own orgasm immediately. His mind went white, his vision clouded. For a few moments even the Time Lord couldn’t feel time.

He came back to himself, dropping his hand from Rose’s head. She was lying on his chest, panting. “You okay?” he asked.

She laughed, a giddy sound. “I think so. I think I just saw God.”

“No such thing, remember?” he said, stroking her back.

She hummed her assent, then gingerly lifted off of him, letting him slip from her body. Rose collapsed on the other side of the bed, her breathing gradually slowing. “Sometimes I’m not sure why we ever get out of bed,” she mused, grinning.

“Well,” he said, rolling over and taking her hand, “how about for this week we don’t.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You can’t stay in bed all week, you’d be bored out of your mind. Not during the sex,” she added off his look. “I mean while I’m sleeping.”

“Maybe. Right now I’m going to join you in the sleeping,” he said, yawning and pulling her close. “I’m tired.”

Rose snuggled into his chest, sighing happily. “Good. I like sleeping with you, it’s such a rare treat.”

“I assume you mean that literally, sleeping with me.” She snorted. “That’s what I thought.” He closed his eyes, completely content.


	9. Chapter 9

“I can’t believe it’s been a week already,” Rose said, throwing her makeup bag into a suitcase and zipping it closed. “It went by too fast.”

The Doctor hummed noncommittally. He was anxious to get back to the TARDIS, she could tell. She was looking forward to being home too, but was still wistful about the end of their honeymoon. They had not, as it turned out, spent the whole week in bed. They had gone on a hike, taken a canoe out onto a crystal clear lake, and gone parasailing. They had eaten at glorious restaurants and drunk lots of champagne and had lots of incredible, mindblowing sex. Not once had they run for their lives. It was, Rose thought, the most absolutely perfect week of her entire life.

She went over to the Doctor and pulled him into a hug. “Thank you for this. It was wonderful. I’ll never forget it.”

“Nor me,” he said. “And we can always come back someday, if you like.”

“I would, I think, yeah.” She let go of him and picked up her bag. “Shall we?”

They left the hotel and started back to the TARDIS, hand in hand. Rose felt the ring on the Doctor’s left hand press against her fingers. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “You were married before, once,” she said. It was a statement, not a question. Over the years she had managed to wring tiny bits of information out of him about his life on Gallifrey. It was always challenging.

“Yes,” he said. 

“Did you wear a ring?”

He shook his head. “No, that wasn’t something Time Lords did.”

“Did you have a wedding?”

“Yes.”

“What was it like?”

“Long.”

 _One word answers_ , Rose thought, _typical_. He had the greatest gob in the universe until she started asking him questions about this part of his life.

“Did you have a honeymoon?” she asked.

He snorted. “No.”

“Also not something Time Lords did?”

He glanced at her as they walked. “Too frivolous.”

She grinned. “No wonder you didn’t fit in there.”

“There were a lot of reasons I didn’t fit in there.”

They crested a hill and there was the TARDIS. The Doctor let go of her hand, trotting towards his ship and away from her questions. Rose filed away the little nuggets of data she’d managed to get out of him along with the rest. He unlocked the door and she followed him through.

“Hello, old girl, did you miss us?” he asked, dropping his bag and reaching up and touching the time rotor. It pulsed and hummed in response. Rose smiled fondly and continued through to the hallway that led to their bedroom.

Once there, Rose looked around. Even their room seemed different somehow, despite the fact that she had been sharing it with him since the day after she came back to this universe. That morning they had said goodbye to Torchwood, when Rose had felt like everything about her body language screamed “I had sex with the Doctor last night!” to anyone within a fifty foot radius. She had been thrilled and excited and full of uncertainty about the new rules of this new relationship. He had approached her shyly later that day and asked if she wanted to move her things into his room. It was probably the best question she’d ever been asked, at least until the day he asked her to marry him. It had been their room ever since. Now, everything about it was filled with import, somehow. They were going to be husband and wife in this room; with any luck, for decades.

Rose started to unpack, sorting her clothes into piles. Which was a good thing, because when the TARDIS suddenly pitched wildly to one side, it was onto one of her piles of laundry that Rose fell. “Mother fuck,” she muttered, getting up onto her knees. “What the hell is he doing?” The TARDIS was still shuddering, so Rose stayed near the floor, not wanting to get injured. She was just considering whether she should start crawling toward the control room when, with a large jolt and a groaning noise, the TARDIS came to a stop. Rose got up and ran.

“What happened?” she asked breathlessly as she careened into the control room. The Doctor was staring at the monitor, one hand feverishly typing on the keypad, the other in his hair. 

“Don’t know. Not sure where we are, but it isn’t where I was aiming for.”

Rose glanced below the console. “Your hand is—”

“I know.” The container holding his old right hand was bubbling rapidly.

“Is it Jenny?” 

“I don’t think so. I don’t sense her mind.”

“Do you sense anything else?”

He looked at her then, and her stomach dropped at the fear she saw in his eyes. He said nothing.

“What?” Rose asked.

“Rose do me a favour,” he said, walking toward the doors. “Stay on the TARDIS.”

“ _What?_ You can’t just go out there alone! What if—”

“ _Stay on the TARDIS!_ ” he shouted. He held up a finger. “Under no circumstances are you leaving this ship, do you understand? If I’m not back in one hour, take her to Cardiff. Get Jack, come back here. Got it? It’s emergency program—”

“Seven, I know,” she said dully. Without another word, he left.

 

*** 

 

The landscape the Doctor emerged onto was barren. It was a moon with a thin atmosphere, just enough to breathe. He carefully pulled the door closed behind him, ensuring that it was locked. If he was right, if what his telepathic senses were telling him was right, then—

“You come when I call. I _love_ it.” The Doctor whirled at the voice. Its familiarity shocked him.

“How is this possible?” he asked.

The Master grinned. “I know, isn’t it weird? Me and you, here—”

“I burned your corpse. Do you mind telling me how you managed to not only survive that, but survive it in the same body?” He affected nonchalance, sticking his left hand in the pocket of his trousers. Using his thumb, he started to slowly work his wedding ring down his finger.

“Oh, it was a thing,” the Master said. “Say what you will about the Sontarans, they do know how to clone.” He turned his head from side to side. “Don’t you think I look good?”

“What do you want?” He kept working at the ring in his pocket.

“Oh, must we to business so soon? Don’t you want to catch up first? It’s been years. What have you been doing? _Who_ have you been doing?” The Master smiled.

“That was your Lucy, a few days ago, wasn’t it? Pretending she was robbed?”

“And cozying up to your lover, yes. That was my Lucy. And it was your Rose.” He glanced at the TARDIS. “She’s in there now. You told her not to leave, I’m guessing. Afraid of what I might do?”

“What do you want?” the Doctor repeated, his teeth clenched. The ring dropped into the depths of his pocket.

“Congratulations on getting her back, by the way. I remember a time when you thought that was a lost cause. Not that she would’ve wanted you then anyway, all shrivelled and old.” He stuck out his tongue distastefully. “I want to talk to you, that’s what. We’re the only two left, correct? Isn’t that what you said?”

“Yes.”

“So who else should I come to with my problems, hmm?”

“And what would those be?”

“Same as you. I want Gallifrey back.” The Master spat out the last few words angrily.

“You? I remember a time when you would’ve destroyed our planet to get what you wanted. What do you care now?”

“I care because we’re _helpless_ now. _Pitiful!_ Do you remember what it was like? Thousands of TARDISes travelling through time and space and from one parallel world to another. The entirety of creation laid out at our feet. Time Lords guiding the evolution of millions of species. Now, what are we left with? Two renegade Time Lords and one broken-down TARDIS. We could be so much more.”

“I’ll grant you ‘renegade’ and ignore ‘broken-down’ for the moment. It doesn’t matter. They’re gone.”

The Master clapped his hands together. “But they don’t have to be. We can bring them back.”

“You know,” said the Doctor almost conversationally, “I knew you were mad, but I didn’t think you were stupid. We can’t bring them back. It’s sort of Time Travel 101.”

“We can. I would have eventually, if you hadn’t turned into Tinkerbell Doctor and rolled back time.”

“What are you talking about?”

“With the paradox machine! Or have you forgotten already? If I could bring what was left of the human race back to kill their ancestors, then I could have brought Gallifrey back. And I still can. All I need is your TARDIS. I can build the paradox machine again.” The Master was pacing around in a tight circle. “Don’t you see? We can bring them all back. The whole planet, we can bring it back.”

“The paradox machine was an abomination.”

“Abomination. Pfft.” The Master dismissed the word with a wave of his hand. “Are you saying you’d let your delicate sensibilities get in the way of the restoration of our race?”

“I’m saying there is no way I am letting you anywhere near the inside of my TARDIS. I’m saying that what you are talking about violates everything we were ever taught, and if any other Time Lord could stand here, he would tell you the same.” He let the edge of steel drop from his voice. “I know it hurts, I know how empty it feels, but our people are gone—”

“Don’t you _dare_ talk to me that way!” the Master screamed. “Don’t you dare pity me!” He stood stiff and still, his breath coming in rapid, audible puffs. Suddenly, his demeanour changed and he cocked his head to one side. “Of course you realize, this means war,” he said, and then hooted with amusement. “Man, I never get tired of the classics. Here’s another one.” He stepped up close to the Doctor, breathing heavily in his face. “When you look back on the ruin your life has become, I want you to remember this moment. This was when you brought about your own downfall.” The Master danced away, clapping his hands and spinning around. “I _love_ it! Villains always get the best dialogue, don’t they? Well anyway, gotta run, loads of things on my to do list.”

“If you think I’m just going to let you leave—”

“You don’t have a choice. See you soon then, Doctor! Bye-bye!” The Master pulled back his sleeve and hit a button on a vortex manipulator strapped to his wrist. Before the Doctor could take more than one step in his direction, the Master had vanished.

 

*** 

 

He stormed back through the doors of the TARDIS with plenty of time to spare. Rose watched him from the jump seat as he angrily set coordinates on the console. “You scared the hell out of me.”

He looked up at her, the anger on his face shifting to sadness. “I’m sorry. I know I was harsh—”

“You were frightened, I get that. Of what?”

He didn’t answer, going back to adjusting the controls.

“Where’s your ring?” she asked.

He pulled his wedding ring out of his pocket and jammed it back on his finger. “I didn’t want him to see it. Don’t know what good it did anyway, he knows you’re with me.”

“ _Who?_ ”

He looked up at her and swallowed. “The Master is back.”


	10. Chapter 10

“But …” Rose sputtered. “He was shot, and didn’t regenerate. You said you burned his body. How—”

“I don’t know. He said something about Sontaran cloning.” He slammed his hand down on the console. “They probably had it planned all along, even Lucy shooting him was part of the plan, and I didn’t see it.”

“How could you have?” Rose asked.

“How could I have been so stupid?” he shouted, running his hands through his hair. “As if he would ever willingly stop living!”

“You’re being too hard on yourself.”

“How can I protect you from him? He knows you, he knows who you are, he knows what you mean to me.” He was pacing, his voice taking on a note of desperation.

“Whoa, there. I can protect myself, I always do. This is no different from any other danger—”

“It is different! You don’t understand, you don’t know him. I’ve known him for centuries, Rose. Practically all my life. And if there’s one constant with him, other than the complete and total insanity, it’s that he likes to hurt me.”

“Then we’ll stop him,” Rose said, her voice calm and even. “What did he say?”

The Doctor didn’t answer, but jumped and started to set coordinates.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I have to warn them, Jack and Martha especially, but probably Donna too, I have to warn them, he might go after them too, they’re easier targets, Donna especially.”

Rose put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure that’s the best idea? If he could … summon the TARDIS or whatever it was he did back there, could he follow you? He found us on that planet with the big shopping place. You might be leading him right to them.”

The Doctor paced away from the console. “It’s possible.”

Rose pulled out her mobile. “I’ll ring Martha.”

“Fine,” he said, without breaking stride.

“It’s gonna be okay,” she said to him as she waited for the call to be answered. He didn’t respond.

The Doctor listened to Rose’s half of the conversation while he calculated all of the potentials, all the eventualities. “Martha, hi, it’s Rose … yeah, good, listen, I’ve got some bad news, something you and Jack need to know … the Master is back, he’s alive. … I don’t know. … The Doctor did, he talked to him. … I don’t know, … no, not on Earth, not yet. … Just, keep your eyes and ears open, right?”

“Rose, give me the phone,” the Doctor said, holding out his hand. She did, quickly. “Martha?” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, sounding shell-shocked.

“Three things. One, he looks the same. He used Sontaran technology to clone himself somehow, so he’s the man you’d recognize, not regenerated. Two, Lucy is with him. Three, he’s got a vortex manipulator. He wants the TARDIS, so I hope he’ll leave you alone, but just in case—”

“We’ll watch out for him. We can make sure both of them are on the police most wanted list, and if he or Lucy turns up on any CCTV, we’ll know it.” Martha said, her surprise tucked away and her professional veneer back in place. 

When he hung up the phone, he was calmer. He regarded Rose evenly. “I still have to go see Donna.”

“No you don’t, I’ll call her as well.”

“No, I have to go see her. I have to go see her, because I did go see her.”

Rose furrowed her brow. “What are you talking about?”

He nodded toward the monitor on the console. “What day is it on Earth, according to the linear time stream that we maintain?” Given their frequent visits, they kept an Earth clock running all the time, so as to avoid crossing their own timeline there.

Rose looked at the monitor and punched a few buttons. “July 12th.”

“July 12th, 2012. Does that date ring any bells?”

Rose thought for a moment, then her eyes widened. “Oh my god. That was one of the dates that I crossed over from the parallel world. And … and I heard you with Donna!”

“Exactly. I have to go there, because I already did. If I don’t, if I alter the timeline, then you might not have gone to back to Norway. And if you didn’t do that, then –”

“Then I never get back to you. It’s a paradox.”

He nodded, already back at the console and adjusting the settings. “So you see, I have to go to London today.” The TARDIS jolted into motion, and Rose grabbed a hand hold, allowing herself to sway with the movement like a seasoned commuter on a bus. “You’ll stay on the TARDIS, of course,” the Doctor added.

“What if you need help?” she asked.

“Rose, there are going to be not one, but two other versions of you in London at this point. The one with me investigating the disappearing children in Dame Kelly Holmes Close, and the one phasing into this universe in Donna’s bedroom. I don’t fancy introducing a third Rose to that mix. Second, you are safer from the Master here on the TARDIS than you would be out there.”

The TARDIS clunked to a halt. “Okay, I’ll grant you your first point, but you can’t keep me on the TARDIS forever.”

The Doctor sighed. “I know. We’ll talk about that later, all right?” He leaned over and kissed her. “I’ll be back in half an hour.”

“Yeah.”

He had parked the TARDIS a block away from the house that Donna shared with her new husband Phil, so the walk was short. He had never visited it before, so he had to examine the house numbers before he spotted the right house and jogged up the walk, stabbing the doorbell with his index finger. After a few seconds, he heard footsteps approaching and the door swung open to reveal Donna.

“Oh my god, isn’t it just like you to show up on my doorstep with no warning!” Donna said, grabbing his arm and pulling him into a fierce hug. He let out an ‘oof’ which made Donna laugh, and in spite of all of his worries, the Doctor found himself laughing too. 

“Well you know me, Donna. Like to keep people on their toes.” He pulled out of the hug and caught himself glancing at the ceiling. She was up there, a Rose that hadn’t seen him in more than two years. He felt a pain in his chest for her, and wished that he could somehow let her know how soon they would be together again. “Actually, I can’t stay, there’s another version of me here, so it’s a bit dodgy, stopping by. In fact, I should have called. That would’ve made sense, to call. With a phone. Ah, well.” His rambling was a stall; he couldn’t say anything of substance until the Rose upstairs had disappeared.

“What are you rabbiting on about?”

“Ah, just … you weren’t planning on going to the Opening Ceremonies tonight, were you?”

Donna snorted. “No, why?”

“No reason. Well, there’s going to be a thing. People disappear, but it turns out all right in the end. Still, best to keep your distance. Make sure you watch on telly, though. Especially the torch lighting,” he said, winking.

“Where’s your better half, then?”

“On the TARDIS. Where I should be getting back to before I inadvertently cause a paradox and bring Reapers down on our heads. Ugh. Nasty.”

“Next time stop by for a longer visit, would you, you ridiculous alien?”

The Doctor felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, just slightly, and he knew that the Rose upstairs had shifted back to the parallel universe. “Listen, Donna, there’s another reason that I came to see you. Do you remember me telling you about the Master?”

“Sure, yeah. Arch-nemesis, crazy-crazy, destroyed the Earth until Martha kicked his ass?”

“Well, I had a little something to do with— No, yes, that’s right. He’s back.”

“I thought he was dead. Like really, seriously dead.”

“Me too.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I was wrong.”

Donna laughed. “Can you hang on while I get something to record you saying that? I’d like to make it my ringtone.”

“Donna, this is serious. He is a madman, and he likes to hurt me, and he’ll come after anyone I care about. He knew already that Rose was back, so odds are he knows who you are. I think it would be a good idea for you and Phil to pack up and leave London for a bit. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going, especially not me. Just go.”

“Are you kidding? Phil has a job, and we can’t just pick up and …” She stopped and stared at him as his hand went into his hair again. “What is that on your finger?”

The Doctor looked at his left hand. “Ah, that. Well …” 

Donna grabbed his hand and examined it herself. “That … _that_ looks suspiciously like a wedding ring.”

“Well, that would be because it is a, er, wedding ring.”

“Oh. My. _God!_ ” Donna screamed, squeezing his hand more than was strictly comfortable.

“Look, Donna, before you get mad, it was something we decided to do privately. We didn’t invite anyone—”

“Oh, I don’t care about that!” she said, pulling him into another bone-crushing hug. “What matters is you married her!” 

“Yup. Put a ring on her finger, made a vow to spend as much of my life with her as I can.” The Doctor grinned at her. “Had a honeymoon and everything.”

Donna rolled her eyes. “I bet you did.” Then she smiled again. “I’m proud of you, dumbo.”

“Thanks. Now I really have to go, like I said. Please, Donna, please consider what I said, okay?”

“I’ll talk to Phil about it. We’ll see. Give Rose a hug and tell her congratulations from me.”

“I will,” he said back to her as he trotted out the door and back down the path. “Be careful!”

“You too!” she called back.

The Doctor suddenly felt like he’d been gone too long, and he ran back to the TARDIS. He unlocked the door and dashed inside, finding the console room empty. He had run to their bedroom, the library, and the garden before it occurred to him that he could just use the TARDIS computer to find Rose. Swallowing his fear, he ran back to the console and checked the readouts. And checked them again. It was on the fifth check, his vision narrowing to a tunnel, that he finally admitted to himself that Rose was no longer in the TARDIS. In fact, she was no longer on Earth at all.


	11. Chapter 11

Donna stood in the doorway of her house, looking down the empty street in the direction the Doctor had just run. She was full of anxiety, her heart racing in her chest. The longer she remained there, staring out at the sunny afternoon, the more convinced she became that something was wrong. Closing the door, she walked slowly down the steps of her porch. This was exactly what he didn’t want her to do. He wanted her to run away and be safe, he didn’t want her putting herself in the way of danger. Yet something was wrong, and somehow she knew it. It would be easy to dismiss this feeling of foreboding as the product of an overactive imagination, except the Doctor was telepathic. Maybe something was really wrong, and what was the harm in checking, anyway? Her footsteps sped up as she made her way down the street. 

When she saw that the TARDIS was still standing at the end of her block, she became even more convinced. She pulled out her key ring, on which she still kept the TARDIS key, and slipped it into the lock. 

The first thing she saw was the Doctor standing at the console, his head down, his shoulders heaving. 

“Doctor?” He looked up at her, and Donna was immediately struck by the abject fear in his eyes. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“He got her.”

“Who?”

“The Master. It has to be. Somehow he got Rose. He took her, transported her, something.” He went back to the monitor and began typing.

“Are you sure? She didn’t just pop out for an errand?”

“She’s not on Earth, Donna,” he said through clenched teeth. “I could track her location if she were. She’s just gone.”

“Well,” Donna said as she approached him carefully, “is there a way to find where she might’ve been taken? Some kind of signal you can trace?”

“It was a vortex manipulator most likely, and those aren’t usually easy to track. But I can try.” He whipped out the sonic screwdriver and waved it around the console room. “No sign that he breached the TARDIS defences. Could she have gone outside?” He ran out the door, Donna following. 

She watched him make a circuit around the TARDIS, then he darted off in one direction. Donna followed more slowly and caught up with him after a moment in a parking lot, the sonic still buzzing away. “Right here,” he said. “It happened right here. I can still pick up a tiny amount of residual energy from the manipulator.”

“Any way to tell where they went?” Donna asked.

He shook his head. “No. They could be anywhere.” The eyes that stared back at Donna were completely lifeless. Without another word, the Doctor turned and started walking back toward the TARDIS. 

Rather than follow him, Donna stayed behind, pulling out her mobile and dialling.

“Jack? It’s Donna. Something’s happened, and I think the Doctor needs your help.”

 

***

 

Rose awoke with a splitting headache. The light was dim, and she gingerly pulled herself into a sitting position, taking in her surroundings. She was in a small room, and had been left lying on a single bed. There was no other furniture in the room. There were three doors: one led to a minuscule closet that was completely empty, one led to a tiny bathroom with a toilet and sink, and one was locked, presumably leading to the rest of the building. The ceiling was low and the walls were white and stained. She touched one wall and felt a vague dampness; based on that and the lack of windows, she assumed she was in some type of cellar.

She wanted to kick herself for her foolishness. She had been standing at the console, watching the monitor so that she would see the Doctor coming back. She was fiddling with the view, looking out at the different angles visible from the TARDIS, when she saw what she thought was a woman being accosted by a large man. She saw her get hit and drop to the ground, then the man started to drag her away. Without a second thought, Rose had left the TARDIS, only just remembering to lock the door behind her.

She had run in the direction that she saw the altercation, and that was the last thing she remembered. Feeling around on her head, she found a bump that was sore to the touch, throbbing with every beat of her heart. That explained it, she thought. Now she just had to figure out where she was. She checked her pockets and found that everything was gone, including her mobile phone and her TARDIS key. No help there. She searched the room and the adjoining bathroom but found no clues. After a while, she lay back down on the bed. Someone would have to come eventually, if only to feed her. 

After an hour, her door opened. The large man she’d seen on the TARDIS viewscreen lumbered into the room and dragged her up from the bed by her arm.

“Hang on there,” she said to him as he hauled her from the room. “I’ll go peaceably, you don’t have to rip my arm off.” He didn’t respond, didn’t slow down, and didn’t loosen his grip.

She was taken up some stairs into what looked like a large, sumptuously furnished house. As she was taken across the border of an Oriental rug she hooked a foot under the edge and managed to stumble, apparently on accident. The man’s grip never slackened, and he quickly pulled Rose to her feet again. They continued on. 

The man stopped them in front of a large wooden door and knocked. The door opened a crack and another goon peered out, then the door opened wider to admit them. 

The room was a library, floor to ceiling with shelves on most of the walls. She was taken over to one bare space without books, and she saw with some horror that there were manacles bolted to the wall. Her escort wasted no time in securing her wrists with them. For the first time, Rose felt genuinely afraid. “Bondage already? Isn’t it a little soon, you haven’t even told me your name. We haven’t even agreed on a safe word,” she remarked in a surprisingly even voice. The goon, who she had started to think of as Goon #1 now that she had seen that there were at least two, did not respond. 

She heard soft laughter from across the room, and it was then that she noticed the large desk at the opposite side of the library with a high-backed swivel chair that was turned around to obscure its occupant. As Goon #1 retreated, the chair turned, revealing a clean-cut man in a black suit. He stood up, straightening his tie, and approached her. He was still laughing.

“Rose Tyler. We finally meet. You don’t know how long I’ve waited for this moment.”

Rose glared at him. “And you are?”

“I am,” he said, and paused for effect.

“No, never mind, I know who you are, you’re the Master, yeah? Sorry to interrupt you there, I just couldn’t wait for you to get it all out.”

The Master’s smile disappeared. “I think you’ll listen to anything and everything that I have to say, Rose Tyler.”

“I suppose I will at that,” Rose said, jiggling her manacles experimentally. 

He reached into his pocket and pulled her TARDIS key out, throwing it at her. “Your key doesn’t work.”

Rose shrugged. “Sometimes when we have a row, he changes the locks.” Actually, the key was imprinted with her DNA, but she didn’t feel the need to share that particular piece of information. She decided to try her hand at getting some information of her own. “So I heard you were dead.”

“You heard wrong,” he said shortly. His eyes grazed over her body obscenely, making her feel naked. “You aren’t exactly what I pictured. We used to sit up nights, back on the Valiant, talking about lost love. His pain at losing you was … delicious.” He inhaled sharply, then moved closer to her. The Master’s eyes locked on her left hand. “Hello, what’s this?” He jerked painfully on her finger until the ring came off. Rose bit her lip to keep from crying out. “Oh, this … this is priceless. Did he _marry_ you?”

He turned the ring, reading it. His lip curled in disgust and he threw the ring over his shoulder. Rose watched as it skittered across the floor and under one of the heavy draperies that hung over the windows in the room. “I mean, I can see why he fucks you. I just don’t see why he would marry you. You’re so common.”

“Yeah, well, no accounting for taste,” she said.

“Indeed. Of course,” he said, “you’re probably a demon in the sack, am I right?” The Master came up close to her again, reached up, and rubbed a thumb across her bottom lip. “That wide mouth, those full lips; I bet you’ve got all kinds of talents, especially with that mouth.” 

“Let’s get something straight right now: you are not going to touch me,” Rose said, trying not to visibly recoil from his proximity. She realized that given her current position, this statement exhibited a ridiculous sort of bravado, but she couldn’t think what else to say. Getting raped by a megalomaniacal Time Lord was not on her to-do list. 

“I don’t think you’re in a position to stop me, do you?”

“You listen to me,” she responded, lifting her chin. “If you touch me, if you let your goons touch me, I swear to you that I won’t be alive come morning.”

“What, you mean you’d kill yourself?” He looked genuinely surprised, then sneered at her. “You’d have no way to do it.”

“I worked for Torchwood in a parallel universe for two years. You have no idea what I can do. Do you want to risk it? I’m your big bargaining chip for the TARDIS, am I right?” Rose was proud of how unruffled her voice sounded, given that what she was saying was mostly a big bluff. “You think I wouldn’t be willing to give my life for his safety? You didn’t do your homework then.”

“I know all about your inappropriate relationship with the Time Vortex.”

“Then you know that I’d rather die than have him trade the TARDIS for me. So here’s the deal, Master. You and all of your henchmen keep your hands off me, I don’t kill myself. You harm one hair on my head, and you lose me. And if I die, what do you think the Doctor will do to you, hmm?” She shook her head, and was surprised to find herself able to smile at him. “Gives me goose bumps just thinking about it.”

The Master’s eyes narrowed. “Are you bluffing, Rose Tyler?”

“I never bluff.”

“Well, now. Let’s find out.” He grabbed her face in both of his hands, his fingers pressed to her temples, her head knocking hard against the wall.


	12. Chapter 12

Rose felt the Master’s fingers pressing into the sides of her head and a dull throb from the back of her skull where it had hit the wall. She also felt a faint buzzing sensation in her brain, and she bravely met the Master’s eyes. After several seconds he let go of her, recoiling, staring at her in shock.

Rose just smiled serenely at him. “We ran afoul of a telepathic race a couple of years back, had my head well and truly messed with. Since then, he made sure I have the best psychic shielding in the universe. No one can penetrate it. Well, except for the Doctor, of course. But that’s only because I like it when he penetrates me,” she said, and then laughed at her own crude joke. “So I guess you’ll just have to trust that I’m telling you the truth.”

“You dirty bitch,” he spat. 

“Do we have a deal?” Rose asked.

The Master stalked up to her and backhanded her across the face. Rose licked her bottom lip and tasted the tang of blood. “Assuming you aren’t going to off yourself because of that, then yes, we have a deal.” Without waiting for Rose to respond, the Master went over to the door and wrenched it open. “John!” he shouted. Then to someone that Rose couldn’t see, he said, “Tell John to get up here.”

After a few minutes, a man that Rose had never seen came into the room. He had brown, wiry hair and a pale face, and had the look of someone who was perpetually bored by everyone and everything around him. Rose supposed he was handsome, if you went for that sort of well-muscled, chiselled jaw look. “Take the prisoner back to her room,” said the Master, “and don’t molest her,” he said, sneering at Rose again. 

John shrugged. “You’re the boss.” He ambled over and unlocked Rose’s manacles, then he took her firmly, but not unkindly, by the arm and led her out of the room. 

Rose trotted to keep up with his rapid pace. “I’m Rose Tyler.”

“That’s nice,” he said in a voice that indicated that he couldn’t have cared less. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and smiled thinly. “Name’s John Hart. What I don’t understand, Rose Tyler, is how you managed to get out of that room so unscathed.”

“Let’s just say the Master and I have a bargain in place.” Rose was surprised to have a guard who was actually talking to her, so she continued on. “And what’s your connection to the Master, John Hart?”

He laughed. “Money, my dear, pure and simple. So don’t try to seduce me into betraying him with your sad, soulful eyes. I can get pussy anywhere, whereas the kind of money he’s offering? Much harder to come by.”

Rose passed the rest of the escort in silence. When they returned to the cellar, John gently shoved her into her room and closed and locked the door behind her. Finally alone, Rose let her mask of bravado fall. She curled up on the bed, silently sobbing into her thin pillow until she drifted off into exhausted sleep.

 

*** 

 

The Doctor was loathe to move the TARDIS, just in case Rose found a way back, so Jack and Martha came over to London on the first train. By the time they arrived, the Doctor had assembled three separate devices designed to track the signal of the vortex manipulator, but so far was having no luck. Donna had been watching his manic exercises with increasing worry. She recognized that the only thing holding him together were these manual tasks. As soon as he ran out of them, she was afraid of what he would do.

Jack and Martha burst through the doors of the TARDIS and there was a sudden flurry of hugs and explanations. Jack and the Doctor immediately went into problem-solving mode together. Martha made her way over to Donna.

“I’m glad you called,” Martha said. “He wouldn’t have.”

“You’re right about that,” Donna agreed.

“Is there any chance that he’s wrong? That it isn’t the Master that got her?”

Donna shrugged. “I suppose there’s a possibility, but given everything he told me, it seems the most likely explanation.”

Martha closed her eyes and seemed to issue a silent prayer; to whom, Donna wasn’t sure. “You know this Master bloke,” Donna said. “Is it as bad as it sounds?”

Martha nodded. “It’s worse.” She looked over at the Doctor and Jack. “He had my family during that year, you know that, right?” Donna nodded. “And my sister Tish, he …” Martha stopped and swallowed awkwardly. “He did things to Tish. I don’t know if the Doctor knows about it, although I know Jack does.”

“Martha, are you saying he raped your sister?”

Martha nodded. 

Donna’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Martha, they had just gotten married. They just got back from a honeymoon, and he was so happy. Even worrying about the Master being back, he could still barely contain his joy.”

“I’ll tell you something, Donna. If we find the Master, I would give quite a lot to get to be the one to kill that man myself.”

 

***

 

Rose was left alone for a couple of days after her first encounter with the Master, and her only human contact was Goon #1, who brought her food and water. He never spoke, despite Rose’s best efforts. On the third day, she was woken out of a sound sleep by John Hart, who brought her up to the library again and chained her to the wall.

“Rough her up a little,” said the Master from across the room. “Not enough so that she goes all suicidal on us, just enough so that she looks bad on the screen.”

“Sorry about this,” murmured John as he punched her in mouth. Her lip split, worse than before, and blood dripped down her chin. 

The Master walked over to her, smiling. “How’s your stay been so far, have everything you need?” He swiped a finger through the blood on her chin and put it in his mouth, sucking it and releasing it an obscene pop. 

“It’s been lovely,” Rose croaked. “Best vacation of my life.”

“Excellent. We are going to make a recording, Rose Tyler, and I want you to be a good girl and don’t throw a fit. If you mess this up, you can forget our little bargain.” He brought his face very close to hers. “Because I’ll go ahead and fuck you, and then I’ll kill you myself.” He smiled a very wide smile.

The Master turned around and faced the opposite wall, where Goon #1 was holding a recording device. “Ready?” he said, “Let’s begin.”

 

*** 

 

They had run out of ideas. 

They had taken the TARDIS back to the moon on which the Doctor had met the Master a few days before, but it was deserted. They were in Cardiff now, the TARDIS parked in the Hub, where after another late night of brainstorming and testing increasingly crackpot theories, they were no closer to finding Rose. While everyone else was working, Donna had retreated to the console room to make one more phone call.

“Hello?” The signal was weak, but the voice coming over the light-years was clear enough.

“Jenny? Jenny, it’s Donna.”

“Donna! I didn’t expect to hear from you.”

“Well, I need your help. Your dad needs your help.”

“If Dad needs my help, why isn’t he calling me?”

“Because he’s too proud and you know it, so why are you asking? Listen, Rose has been taken.”

“Rose? What do you mean, taken?”

“Taken, kidnapped. Please, Jenny, just come. He needs you.” A beeping sound from the console caught Donna’s attention. “Look, I’ve gotta go,” Donna said, hanging up and flinging open the TARDIS door. “Doctor!” she shouted.

He came running at her call, Jack and Martha not far behind. “What is it?”

Donna gestured. “I don’t know, sounds like some kind of signal.” They followed the Doctor over to the console and watched as he adjusted the controls. The image that finally appeared made Donna’s heart sink.

A man in a suit stood in the foreground of the video image. Behind him she could clearly see Rose, chained to a wall, blood on her face. Donna looked at the Doctor, but other than a clenched jaw and rapid breathing, he betrayed no emotion. “Is that him?” she whispered to Martha, who nodded.

The Master smiled. “Hello, Doctor, me again! Bet you were wondering if you would ever hear from me, weren’t you? But never fear, here I am. And I think I have something of yours,” he said. The Master walked over to Rose and he pulled her head back by the hair. “At least, I think she’s yours, right? Look familiar?” He let go of her and approached the camera again.

“Here’s the deal: the TARDIS for your little wife. In three days, in a place of my choosing. I’ll send you the coordinates. If you don’t show up, if you try to trick me, if you bring anyone with you, she dies. Got it? Simple enough for you? Good.” He signalled to someone out of frame. “That’s enough, shut it off.”

The camera swung around wildly, like the person running it didn’t quite know what he was doing, then the picture went dark.

“Hang on a minute,” Jack said, “Go back.”

“Jack, I don’t think that’s necessary,” Donna hissed, putting a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. “She’s alive,” she said to him softly, leading him away from the console. “Just focus on that, she’s alive, yeah?”

“I’ll make the trade,” the Doctor said quickly. “I’ll make the trade, I don’t care about anything else.”

“Wait, hang on—” Martha started to interrupt.

“I knew it!” Jack said, still at the monitor. “Come look at this. When the camera swung around at the end, I just caught a glimpse, but I’d know that face anywhere.” 

Donna looked over and saw that Jack had frozen the video on the very blurry image of a man. “Who?”

“A very old colleague of mine from the Time Agency,” said Jack. “Doctor, I think I know where the Master got his vortex manipulator. Not only that, but I may have a way of finding Rose before the three days are up.”


	13. Chapter 13

Rose awoke with a start. She was facing the wall on the tiny bed, the only light coming from the bare bulb in the bathroom, which she had left on so that she wasn’t in total darkness. Turning over, Rose could barely make out the outline of someone standing against the wall near the door, someone with long hair.

“Is that you, Lucy?” Rose whispered, her swollen mouth making it hurt to talk. She hadn’t seen the woman since her capture, but she had assumed Lucy to be around somewhere in the large house.

Lucy didn’t respond, but took a step toward her. The wedge of light from the bathroom illuminated Lucy’s features, and Rose flinched. She could see livid bruises on Lucy’s face and arms. She looked like she had suffered a nose bleed recently. 

“He doesn’t know I’m down here. The guards will keep my secret. They pity me.”

Rose sat up and glanced toward the door. If it was unlocked –

“Don’t bother. There’s a guard at the bottom of the stairs and another at the top. You’ll just get hurt.” 

Relaxing a fraction, Rose asked, “What do you want?”

Lucy shook her head, like she wasn’t sure what she wanted. 

“Did the Master do that to your face?” Rose asked, pointing.

“He can’t help it. It’s all so hard for him. Everything’s so wrong.”

“I can’t even begin to list all the things that are wrong with that statement. And I shouldn’t need to. Aren’t you from 21st-century Earth? You should know better. There’s no reason for a woman like you to put up with such complete and utter bollocks.”

Lucy smiled at Rose condescendingly. “But he’s a Time Lord, it’s different. You must know that.”

“I bloody well do not, not if you’re implying that the Doctor uses my face like a punching bag. He would _never_.”

“Well, he’s had it so easy,” Lucy reasoned. “Not like my husband. He has to scrape for everything.”

“Is that what he tells you? Is that how he excuses the fact that he beats you? If that’s what he says, then he’s even more pathetic than I thought, and I can’t believe you just take it. If he’s had it hard, it’s because he does evil things and people stop him. Well, too bloody bad. He’s going to have it hard again before this is over. When the Doctor finds me, your husband will wish he’d never been … cloned or whatever.” 

“Once we have the TARDIS, things will be better,” Lucy said, shaking her head. “Things will be better.”

“Didn’t he rule the Earth for a whole year? He had the TARDIS, and the Doctor completely under his thumb. Were things better then?” Rose threw up her hands. “I don’t know why I’m bothering to talk to you.”

“The Doctor …” Lucy stopped and swallowed. “He was kind to me.”

“That’s because he’s a kind man. A good man. Lucy,” Rose said, reaching up and grabbing her hand. “Somehow, I’m going to figure out a way out of this. And when I do, if you help me, we’ll get you out of here. I promise, we’ll find some way to save you. But only if you let us. Only if you want to be saved.”

Lucy jerked her hand from Rose’s grasp and backed up, a look of terror on her face. Before Rose could say or do anything more, Lucy had opened the door and darted out, slamming it behind her. Rose heard her throw the bolt, locking the door. 

It was a long time before Rose fell asleep again.

 

*** 

 

The Doctor made quick work of getting Jack’s vortex manipulator functional again. 

“I’m sorry,” Jack was saying for the twentieth time. “It didn’t occur to me that it would be John. I should’ve known—”

“Jack, stop it,” the Doctor said. “You figured it out now, that’s what matters.”

“Like I said, I have the base codes for his manipulator in the computers here. All I have to do is upload them.” Jack punched a quick sequence of buttons on his wrist, “and I can lock on to his location.” 

“If you can get his location, can’t we just take the TARDIS there now?” asked Martha, anxious to do something productive.

The Doctor shook his head. “I’d love nothing better, but it’s too risky. I can shield my consciousness as best I can, but there’s a chance that the Master will sense me or the TARDIS itself if I get that close.”

“Besides, we need to get the lay of the land before we go charging in. I’m going to scout it out.” Jack lowered his voice to speak to just the Doctor, but not so much that Martha couldn’t still hear. “I know how much you must want to get to her quickly, Doctor, but—”

“Your plan is a good one, Jack. I know it.”

“She’s strong, Doctor. Whatever he’s done, she’ll recover.”

“Just go.”

With a nod and a salute, Jack disappeared.

Martha watched the Doctor slump over to the couch in the Hub and collapse onto it. “Do you want a cup of tea?” she asked.

He scrubbed his hands over his face. “No.” Looking around, he asked “Where’s Donna?”

“She went to call Phil, then I think she was going to have a lie down in the TARDIS. Maybe you should try to rest too,” Martha suggested.

“Can’t,” he said.

“Doctor, you said earlier … I mean, I know you don’t want to hear this, but you can’t give him the TARDIS.”

The eyes he turned on her were empty. “I know,” he whispered.

“We’ll do everything in our power to get her back, of course we will, but if the fate of the Earth hangs in the balance …”

“Martha, I know. I can’t get Rose back in exchange for the safety of the rest of the world. Multiple worlds. I’ve had to make this choice before, and I made the right one. So you can stop fretting, I won’t do anything crazy.” He stood up and retreated into the TARDIS. 

Martha tried to work after that, but her thoughts kept turning back to the Doctor. Seeing him like this brought back painful memories of the time she had travelled with him. She had grown more accustomed over the last few years to a man who was genuinely happy with his life, so that she had almost forgotten the way he used to be. Now she remembered. When Jack appeared an hour later with John Hart, Martha had to quickly wipe away tears before she could approach them. 

Jack had one of John’s arms wrenched behind his back. “I’m taking him to the interrogation room,” he said to Martha. “You can tell the Doctor we have him. I’ve got one more errand to run.”

 

*** 

 

John Hart decided to take a nap, given that there was nothing else to do, handcuffed to a table, waiting for Jack to return. He had just rested his free arm on the table and his head on his arm, closing his eyes, when he heard the door to the room open again.

He looked up to see an unfamiliar man. There was nothing threatening about him; quite the contrary. He was tall and too thin; John thought he could probably pick him up and throw him, given the opportunity. He wore a brown pinstriped suit and trainers, and John started to make a joke when he caught the man’s eyes. They were cold and hard and impossibly old. 

“You’re working for the Master,” the man said. It wasn’t a question. “Do you know who I am?”

“No,” John said.

“I’m the Doctor. I’m the only other Time Lord in existence. Your boss has my wife. So I hope, I really hope, for your sake, that you have information that will help me get her back.”

“Or what?” 

One of the Doctor’s hands emerged from behind his back. Just before John’s world exploded in pain, he caught sight of a taser. “Or this is going to be a very, very long interview.”

 

***

 

Jenny and Jack materialized in the Torchwood hub, and Jenny shook her head to try to clear it. “Thanks for picking me up, Jack,” she said, smiling at him as he closed his vortex manipulator.

“Not a problem, doll. It’s just good to see you again.”

“Where is he?” 

“Was on the TARDIS last time I … hang on,” Jack said, approaching the window above the interrogation room. Jenny followed.

What she saw was so incongruous she could hardly believe it. The Doctor was holding a taser to a man’s neck. He watched the man writhing in agony, his expression completely blank.

“Dad, _stop!_ ” Jenny screamed.

He looked up at them, then let go of the button on the taser. The man slumped onto the table; it wasn’t clear from her vantage point whether he was conscious or not.

The Doctor left the room and climbed the stairs to join them. Throwing the taser to Jack, he said, “Your friend was very talkative, eventually.” Without another word, he went back into the TARDIS. Jenny followed him.

“What the hell were you doing out there?” she asked.

“Why are you here, Jenny?” he said, walking toward the console.

“Donna called me, Jack picked me up. Dad—”

“Don’t start.”

“That wasn’t you.”

He glanced up at her. “Maybe you don’t know me all that well.”

“When I met you, you spurned violence. They told me what you did when I died. You could’ve shot the man who shot me, and you didn’t. You said you never would. That entire society is based on what you did, or what you didn’t do. Where did that man go?”

“He shrivelled up and died the day my wife was taken.”

“I don’t think he did.”

“Do you know what he’s probably doing to her, Jenny? I do, because he told me about it, years ago. Rose was trapped in the parallel universe, and the Master had me at his mercy. For a year.”

“I know that, Dad, Martha’s told me before—”

“You _don’t_ know, and neither does Martha. She has no idea. No idea what that year was like. Jack and I decided a long time ago not to tell her everything that happened on the Valiant, that things had been hard enough for her already.”

She put a hand on his arm and felt his muscles trembling under the cloth of his coat. “What?” she whispered.

He kept his eyes trained on the console. The voice that came out was flat, emotionless. “He used to talk to me for hours. I think he was bored, or lonely. And he had read the TARDIS logs, so he knew everything, what I had written down about the past and what he was able to read between the lines. He figured it out, about Rose, about what I felt for her.

“He used to describe what he would do to her. He said his fondest wish was that Rose hadn’t gotten lost, so that he could torture her while I watched. So that he could … “ He stopped and cleared his throat. “Sometimes he would have sex with his wife Lucy in front of me, and he would call her Rose. I never was sure if Lucy was acting the part of a rape victim then or if it was real. The bruises were certainly real.” His voice broke, and he looked at Jenny. “And I was so glad then, glad that Rose _was_ lost. Glad that she escaped. But I brought her back, and now, now anything that happens to her is my fault.”

“No, it isn’t.” Jenny was shocked, but she strove to hide it, to be strong in the face of this horrible story. “It’s not your fault, and it may not be as bad as you’re imagining.”

“I think it’s probably worse than I’m imagining.” He started flipping switches on the console, the last one breaking off in his hand. He looked at it like he didn’t know what it was. “She’s my wife, Jenny.”

“We’ll get her back. Dad, I promise, we’ll get her back.”


	14. Chapter 14

Jack entered the interrogation room with a glass of water. John had his head resting against his free hand, his elbow on the table. He glanced at Jack briefly before closing his eyes again. “Brought you this,” Jack said, pushing the water over toward John and sitting in the chair next to him.

“Ta,” John croaked, picking up the water and gulping it. 

“You gonna be okay?” Jack asked.

John shrugged. “I’ve been through worse. Hell,” he said, laughing, “I’ve been through worse with you at my side. I’ll live, just like always.”

“You backed the wrong horse here, John.”

“Really? They look sort of the same from where I’m sitting.”

Jack flinched; he had to admit that from John’s perspective, that was probably true. “The Doctor lost his wife. That might make anybody go a little crazy.” He stood up. “Besides, he didn’t do anything that I didn’t want to do to you myself. There are few people on this planet that I value more highly than Rose Tyler.”

“I didn’t know who she was. Far as I knew, she was just some cunt got mixed up in some dirty dealings. Had no idea she was a friend of yours.”

“And the fact that he had a woman chained to the wall, that didn’t bother you?”

“Not my business. I was just doing the job I was hired for.”

“Which was?”

John pointed to his bare wrist. “Use of my magical travel machine, mainly. Bodyguard, something I am quite spectacularly failing at just now, thanks to you. He only paid me twenty percent upfront, and no way am I going to see any more of it now that I’ve gone and gotten myself captured.”

“Twenty percent?” Jack laughed. “Now I know you know better than that.”

“Well, beggars can’t be choosers, can they? Besides, it was twenty percent of an obscene amount of cash. Point is, now that my job is buggered, I might as well cooperate with you.”

“You mean, now that I’ve got you cuffed to this table.”

John tilted his head to acknowledge Jack’s point. “I seem to remember being handcuffed by you to be a lot more fun, Jack.” John took another gulp of water. “What’s the score? You and that Time Lord in the pinstripes?”

Jack shook his head and sat back down. “No. I mean, I wouldn’t say no, but there’s never been room for anyone else but Rose, not for as long as I’ve known him.”

“There’s always room for someone else.”

“Nah, those two, they’re like a fairy tale couple. I never stood a chance with either of them, or with both of them together, and believe me, I tried.”

“Look, Jack, I’m sorry about this. I really didn’t know. After what happened with Grey, I swore I would never betray you again, and I meant it. I’ve done right by you ever since then.”

“I know you have. Then help us. We’ve got to stop the Master, he’s the worst kind of bad news.”

John sighed. “I was starting to get that impression anyway. Not that I necessarily think your Doctor is any better. If I can never see or hear anything of Time Lords again after this, I’ll count myself lucky.”

Jack leaned over and planted a brief kiss on the other man’s lips. “I’m sorry he hurt you.”

“Eh, I suppose I deserved it.” John raised an eyebrow. “Make it up to me later, when this is all over?”

“We’ll see.”

“That is, if you aren’t still mooning after Eye Candy.”

“Ianto is currently dating a paralegal named Cecily.”

“See? That works out nicely then.”

 

*** 

 

Lucy examined herself in her vanity mirror, turning her head this way and that. The bruises were worse, making her face a ghastly mosaic of blue and purple. She half-heartedly dabbed at them with powder, but it was a fruitless exercise, born of habit. It didn’t matter anyway; who was she hiding them from? From herself? From him? From the guards who averted their eyes from her as she ghosted around the hallways of the dark house? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d even been outside the house into the garden; was it weeks ago, or months?

She heard the shower shut off in the bathroom. After a few minutes he emerged, followed by a cloud of steam. Lucy watched him walk behind her in the mirror, a towel slung low around his waist, his hair damp. He sat on the bed, staring into space. After several seconds, he looked up and met her eyes in the mirror. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. 

“Two more days,” the Master said. 

“Yes,” she agreed automatically, picking up a hairbrush.

He approached her, and Lucy kept her eyes trained on his reflection. “You went downstairs to the cellar to see Rose,” he said.

Lucy dropped the brush. “I wasn’t going to do anything, I swear, I was just—”

“You were just curious about her. It’s fine, Lucy, I’m not going to reprimand you for it.” Lucy exhaled slowly. The Master regarded her mildly. “What did she say?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, come on, Lucy, I know that’s not true. She yammers on as much as that idiotic husband of hers. What did she say?” His hand fell to her shoulder. She wore only a thin dressing gown and the pinch of his fingers was sharp through the cloth.

Lucy’s mind whirred to remember something Rose had said that was harmless to tell him. “She thinks … she thinks he’s going to rescue her.”

He snorted. “Of course she does. What else did she say?”

“I don’t … I really don’t remember if she said anything else, darling,” Lucy said, her hands trembling fiercely. She clutched them together in her lap.

“No? You don’t remember?” The Master grabbed her arm and wrenched her up from her seat, whirling her around to face him. “Let’s see what you remember,” he said, his fingers going to her temples. Lucy closed her eyes, bracing for the familiar ache that came when he plundered her mind.

After an endless minute he let go. Lucy grasped the back of the chair to keep from falling down, then opened her eyes to see him laughing, clutching his side comically. “She wants to save you? That’s hilarious. Precious!” He hooted again, then just as abruptly as he began, he stopped laughing. “But she doesn’t have a plan, that’s the important thing. ‘Somehow, I’m going to figure out a way out of this,’ she said. She hasn’t the faintest idea what to do, poor girl.” Dropping his towel on the floor, he walked over to the wardrobe and began to dress. 

Lucy sank into her chair once more. “What will happen once you have the TARDIS?” she asked.

“I’m going to rebuild the paradox machine, of course. I already told you that.”

“And then you will restore your people?”

“Eventually.” He paused in the middle of buttoning his shirt and approached her again. “Lucy, let me make one thing clear. Your trip downstairs to visit the prisoner was useful, so I’m letting it go. If you talk to her again without my permission,” he said, wrenching her face around, “I’ll kill you.” After a beat he let her go, his hands returning to his shirt buttons.

Lucy dropped her eyes. “You always say that,” she murmured softly. “When will you?”

Before he could respond, there was a knock at the door. “Come!” he barked, not taking his eyes from Lucy’s. For once, she held his gaze.

“Sir?” It was one of the men hired for their brawn and proficiency with weapons; Lucy couldn’t remember his name.

“What is it?”

“It’s John Hart, sir. He’s disappeared.”

Lucy watched the Master’s eyes dart immediately to his nightstand, where the vortex manipulator was sitting. “What do you mean, disappeared? The perimeter is well-guarded. Where could he have possibly gone?”

“I don’t know, sir. We noticed it late last night, but we didn’t think much of it. Then he was still gone this morning, so we started a search. We can’t find him anywhere.”

“You noticed it _last night_? Why didn’t anyone tell _me_?”

“I’m sorry, sir. We didn’t think—”

“I don’t pay you to think, I pay you to, among other things, _report to me_ if you see anything out of the ordinary!” He upended a small table, sending a vase of flowers crashing to the floor. Lucy watched as rivulets of water ran across the polished hardwood floor.

“Yes, sir. We’re still looking for him.”

“Go get the prisoner and put her in the library. Let’s see what she knows about this.”

 

*** 

 

“Doctor, it’ll work,” Jack said.

“It depends too much on the mercenary.” The Doctor paced Jack’s office, staring at the floor.

“He’s not a morally upstanding guy, I’m fully aware of that. But he has his own kind of loyalty, after a fashion, and he’s loyal to me.”

“Wanting to fuck you is not the same as being loyal to you, Jack.”

“It goes deeper than that. Just trust me.” Jack leaned forward in his desk chair. “I don’t know if we can do this without him. He knows the house, he knows the defences.”

“If he betrays us, Jack, we’re all dead.”

“Without him, we’re probably dead anyway. I saw the kind of manpower the Master’s got; it’s substantial. Doctor,” Jack said, standing up, “there’s going to be a body count when we storm that place. There’s no way around it.”

“I know that.” He met Jack’s eyes. “What’s our alternative? Sacrifice Rose, or give him the TARDIS and sacrifice the world. This is the only way.”

 

***

 

“I was hoping you might chain me up somewhere different this time,” Rose remarked, “just for a change of pace.”

“Shut up.” He was pacing back and forth in front of her, clearly agitated. The sight of his distress had Rose’s heart racing with hope. “One of my men has gone missing.”

“Oh?”

“Know anything about it?”

Rose cackled. “If I did, would I tell you?”

His punch to her gut would have doubled her over if she weren’t chained to the wall. As it was, Rose gasped, trying to regain her breath. “You aren’t as clever as he is, you aren’t a Time Lord, you are a filthy human. You need to remember that. You need to remember your place in this. You are to talk to me with respect, do you understand?”

Rose drew a shaky breath and spit in his face.

The Master laughed, wiping off his cheek. “That’s it. Our deal’s off. If I’m careful, I can probably get him to trade the TARDIS for your corpse.” He turned to the guard at the door. “Take her down and hold her on the floor.”

Rose closed her eyes, resigned. Maybe he would kill her quick, that was probably her best hope, unlikely as it was. The goon unlocked the manacles around her wrists and she started to panic, struggling in vain against his superior strength. Angered by her lack of cooperation, the man threw her across the room. Rose landed against the edge of a coffee table like a rag doll, the corner gouging into her back, and she slid to the floor. Her vision started to narrow, the sounds in the room growing muffled. Passing out would be good, she reasoned. This would really be a most excellent time to be unconscious, given what the Master was probably going to do to her. 

She felt meaty hands close around her forearms, pinning them to the floor. She heard the Master laughing from somewhere off to the side, but she couldn’t see him. “Don’t worry, Rose. Getting the Doctor’s sloppy seconds? I’m not going to enjoy this any more than you are.” He walked around and stood near her feet. “Well, maybe a little bit more.”

“Stop it.” The voice came from the other side of the room. Rose wrenched her head around, trying to see. It had sounded like—

“Lucy? What are you doing?”

“You stop it right now.”

The goon holding her had turned to look too, and Rose was just able to make out Lucy, holding a gun on the Master with a shaking hand.

“Well, it’s déjà vu all over again. Lucy, put the gun down.”

“No.” Rose heard the sound of the gun being cocked. “You forgot something,” Lucy said, holding up something in her other hand. 

“My ring? Doesn’t matter, Lucy. I can regenerate.”

“How many times? Because I think I can probably keep shooting you.”

Rose turned to look back at the Master. He snorted. “I’m done with this.” He walked over and put a heel on Rose’s throat, cutting off her windpipe. “Here, I’ll hold this one. Go kill her,” he said to the goon.

Rose felt her arms released as spots formed in front of her eyes. She tried to grab the Master’s foot, but her movements were weak, her fingers scrabbling ineffectually at him, her feet kicking against the floor. _Shoot him_ , she thought, _just shoot him_ , but no gunshot came. Just before she blacked out, Rose heard the unmistakable sound of snapping bone and a body slumping to the floor.


	15. Chapter 15

Rose opened her eyes. She was lying on the floor of the library in the same position, except she could breathe. Her throat hurt, and she strained not to cough audibly. Turning her head to the side, Rose saw the Master standing over Lucy, who was lying in a heap on the floor. “Go get one of the others to take care of this body,” he said.

The goon left the room, and the Master appeared to have forgotten about Rose entirely. Perhaps he thought she was dead too. He knelt down in front of Lucy, and Rose couldn’t believe her luck. She rolled to her side slowly, careful not to make a sound.

“You stupid, stupid girl.” She froze, but it seemed that he was directing the words at Lucy. “I thought you would be faithful to me until the end.” He sighed. “Turns out your mind was too weak.”

Rose felt anger welling up inside her. Lucy had finally shown some strength, for once in her miserable life, only to have everything cut short at that very moment. Worse, she had probably acted on Rose’s behest. Hadn’t she asked the woman to help her? As it turned out, the request had been a death sentence.

She looked around the room desperately and spied a heavy piece of statuary on the shelf above her head. If she could grab it and sneak up on him—

“I hear your heart racing, Rose Tyler,” the Master said without turning. “I thought you’d be unconscious longer.”

“Well, you thought wrong.” Her voice came out as a hoarse rasp. Rose pulled herself up to a standing position, trying not to wobble. Dizziness threatened to overtake her.

The Master stood and turned, staring balefully at her. “Did you think you could sneak up on me in my grief?” he mocked, laughing. “Oh, woe is me, poor Lucy!” 

“She was your wife.”

“Doesn’t mean anything.”

“That just shows how stupid _you_ are. It means everything.”

“Does it?” He tilted his head to the side, examining her like he would an interesting species of insect. “Well,” he said, and his voice dropped a story, “perhaps you could teach me what it means. Seems I have a vacancy.”

Rose laughed. “Oh yes, please!” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Can I please take Lucy’s place? The Doctor doesn’t beat me the way you would. It’s a failing of his, he’d be the first to admit it.”

The Master sneered at her. “Never mind. I forgot how badly the sound of your voice makes me want to pull out your entrails.” Glancing at the floor, the Master reached down and picked up the gun from where it lay at Lucy’s side. He aimed it at Rose. “It seems Lucy’s little display only postponed the inevitable for you.”

Before he could say any more, the sound of a disturbance in the hall caught their attention.

 

*** 

 

Martha bent over, her hands on her knees. It didn’t seem to matter that she had braced herself for what travel via vortex manipulator felt like, it was still a shock to her system. By the time she was able to look up, the others seemed fully recovered.

“Okay, so far, so good,” said Jack. They had materialized in what John had said was an unused section of the house, and it looked like he had been correct. There was no one else in the corridor, and no alarms seemed to have been raised. The Master’s men were on guard against incursion from the outside, but obviously not against four people suddenly appearing inside the house.

“Now,” John said in a whisper, “can you get a fix on his location?”

Jack pushed the buttons on his wrist in quick succession. “About 75 feet that way and one floor down,” he said, gesturing.

“That’ll be the library. There are going to be a lot of men between us and him.” 

Jenny was stretching like she was preparing for a gymnastics competition. “The more we can take out without raising an alarm, the better.”

“That’s what the silencers are for,” John said, hefting his sidearm. “Where’s your gun?”

Jenny threaded her fingers together and flexed her hands, cracking the knuckles. “I don’t need a gun.”

Martha pulled out her own weapon. She hated using them, but after her UNIT training and her years with Torchwood, she was proficient with a gun. She just kept reminding herself that this was the Master, the man who had enslaved her family and raped her sister, and that lives lost today might save untold millions tomorrow. Martha took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m ready.”

They stole out from their deserted corridor into one leading to the main part of the house. The first two guards they found were dropped by Jack and John with no fuss, silencers pressed against the men’s temples. They met another coming up the stairs which Jenny dispatched with a kick to the head; he dropped like a stone. 

Things got more complicated as soon as they descended to the main level, where several guards were milling around. From the landing, Jack and John were able to quickly take down two men, but this time they were spotted and shouting started. Jenny charged into the fray, managing to drop two others before they could get their guns out of their holsters. 

While the others were fighting, Martha spied an opening to get to the library. Before she could second guess herself, she ran for it and hit the handle of the heavy door, slamming through it with her gun in front of her.

 

*** 

 

“Martha!”

Rose thought she had never been so surprised and pleased to see someone in her life. 

“Hi, Rose,” Martha said, training her eyes and her gun on the Master. “Wow, am I glad to see you alive.”

“Martha Jones,” the Master sneered, “now _this_ is new level of pathetic, even for you. Did he promise to keep you as his bit on the side if you rescued his wife?”

“Shut your mouth and drop your gun,” Martha said.

The Master blew Martha a kiss, aiming his gun at her. “No, you.”

Martha’s eyes flicked to the floor, where Lucy still lay, her neck at an obviously awkward angle. “Is she …?”

“Nothing you can do for her now, Doctor Jones.” The Master’s attention was mostly on Martha. Rose took her chance, grabbing the heavy, eighteen-inch statue from the shelf she was next to and hiding it behind her back. She edged closer to him.

“I’m not kidding,” Martha said, “Drop your gun.”

Rose heard the crack of gunfire from outside the room. In that instant, Martha glanced briefly at the door. The Master fired, and Martha fell back against the wall. Rose swung as hard as she could at the Master’s head. He pitched forward, dazed, and Rose reached out and ripped the vortex manipulator from his wrist. She made a beeline for Martha.

“Oh god, Martha,” Rose gasped, dropping to the floor where Martha had slid. Blood was welling through her jacket near the shoulder. 

“He shot me.”

“I know. It’s gonna be okay, though. Who else—”

“Rose, look out!”

Pain exploded from Rose’s temple and she fell to one side. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the Master standing over them both, gun raised. “I am so going to enjoy killing both of you.”

The door burst open again. As Rose watched, everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The Doctor’s daughter, Jenny, ran in and disarmed the Master with a blow to his wrist. Jack and the guard named John Hart were close behind, both with guns trained on the Master. Jenny spotted Rose on the floor and ran to her. 

“Hands behind your head,” Jack said. 

Rose started to struggle to her feet. Reaching up, she could feel blood dripping from a cut on the side of her forehead, but it didn’t seem like a lot. She waved Jenny off. “I’m fine,” she croaked, her voice still raspy, “go to Martha, he shot her.” 

The Master had followed Jack’s directions and was sneering at John Hart. “You traitor.”

Grinning widely, John shrugged. He was bleeding from what looked like a bullet wound in one arm, but he seemed to be enjoying himself. “See, if you’d told me that the lady over there was a personal friend of my buddy Jack here, I could’ve explained my conflict of interest.”

John kept his gun aimed steadily at the Master’s head while Jack holstered his gun and pulled out a mobile phone. “Sure you’re okay?” he said to Rose. 

She nodded, then turned to Jenny. “Is Martha?”

Jenny was pressing a cloth to Martha’s wound. “It’s through her shoulder, she’ll be fine once we get her back.”

Jack was speaking into the phone. “Mission accomplished, we’re secure. … She’s okay. I’ll send you coordinates, you can bring her right into this room.” He closed the phone and typed something into his wrist. “And now,” Jack said, smirking at the Master, “things get even worse for you.”

Rose almost leapt for joy at the sound she heard next: the other-worldly oscillations of the TARDIS. It materialized against the door, effectively keeping any of the Master’s reinforcements from getting into the room.

The door slammed open and the Doctor stalked out. His eyes fell on Rose, on her bloody face and swollen lip, and the expression on his face held more rage than Rose had ever imagined could come from him. Rose started walking toward him. Instead of meeting her halfway, the Doctor turned toward the Master. In one smooth motion, he pulled the gun from Jack’s holster and shot the Master in both knees.

The Master fell, howling in agony. The Doctor was still advancing on him. “It’s not enough to make you regenerate, just enough to make you hurt a lot.” Rose was frozen in shock. The sight of a gun in the Doctor’s hand made her stomach roil.

“Where’s the forgiveness?” the Master asked, panting in pain through clenched teeth.

“No forgiveness. Not this time.”

“What have you become, Doctor? Your little wife was going to kill herself for you. What have you turned _her_ into?”

“I haven’t …” he said, glancing back at Rose with wide eyes. Rose shook her head faintly.

“Are you a killer now?” the Master taunted.

The Doctor turned back to him, gun aimed at his head. “Perhaps I am. Do you think you’ll regenerate after a point blank shot to your head? Hmm? If your brain splatters all over the floor? I don’t think you would. I think you’d be quite permanently dead.”

“And could you live with yourself if you killed me?” Sweat beaded on his face.

“After what you did to Rose, I’m not sure I can live with myself if I don’t.”

“Dad.” Jenny said, approaching the Doctor. “Listen to me, please. You can’t do this. I know you’re angry, I know you want vengeance, I understand that. But you can’t stoop to his level. You do that and you become him.”

“Doctor,” Rose called. “She’s right. Please.”

He looked at Rose, his eyes full of pain. “Rose.” They stared at each other for several long moments.

Rose held out her arms to him. With another glance at Jenny, he handed the gun back to Jack and was in Rose’s arms in the next instant. She clutched at him, her feelings a mixture of relief and fear. The man who had come out of the TARDIS had been like a stranger, but the arms around her now, his breath against her neck, were so familiar. Rose squeezed her eyes shut against the tears that threatened to fall.

“Are you people crazy?” Rose looked up to see John Hart approaching the Master. Before anyone could react, John shot him several times in the head at close range, carrying out the Doctor’s threat with brutal precision. Looking at the shocked faces around him, John said, as if they were simpletons, “I don’t want that guy coming after me for revenge later.”

The Doctor let go of Rose and stood staring at the ruin that was the Master’s body for a long time. Jenny and Jack helped Martha onto the TARDIS. Jack came back out, putting a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder.

“Will he regenerate?”

He shook his head. “No. He died too quickly.”

Rose walked over and closed Lucy’s eyes. Then, suddenly remembering, she went over to one of the windows and moved the drapery out of the way. Reaching down, she retrieved her wedding ring from the floor.


	16. Chapter 16

Rose hissed. “Ow.”

“Sorry. Still, better than being in an Earth hospital; you’d be getting stitches right about now.” The Doctor finished applying a dermal repair bandage to Rose’s forehead as she sat on the infirmary table on the TARDIS.

“Like Martha,” she pointed out.

He smiled thinly. “Well, you know, Martha likes hospitals.” Rose watched as the Doctor moved around the infirmary efficiently. To look at him, one might think that he was fine, but Rose could tell by the set of his shoulders that he was far from it.

“Is she going to be okay?”

“Right as rain.” He picked up a lighted scope and held it to his eye. “Now, say ‘Ahh.’”

She opened her mouth obediently so that the Doctor could examine her throat.

“Some bruising of your windpipe,” he said after a few moments, switching off the light. “It may hurt for a few days; I can give you something for the pain. Now, let me have a look at your back.”

Rose pulled her top over her head, and she felt a slight pull as the dried blood from her shirt pulled away from the gash on her back. She winced and turned so that the Doctor could see. 

She felt him unfasten her bra carefully and he went to work cleaning the wound. “I’m sorry Martha can’t do this.”

Rose frowned and turned her head to look at him. “What do you mean? You always take care of me when I get hurt. Why would I want Martha?”

“Well, you know, she’s a … she’s a real medical doctor.”

“You know as much as she does. Probably more.”

He nodded distractedly and started applying some kind of salve to her back. “This will sting a little, but that means it’s working. It’s not a serious laceration.”

“Thanks.”

Finishing up, the Doctor walked over to the sink and washed his hands. “I should probably know,” he said, then paused. “I should probably know the extent of your other injuries.” His back was to her.

Rose shrugged. “I don’t think there’s anything else, other than what you’ve seen. Just a lot of bruises and sore muscles. I’m fine,” she assured him, hopping off the table. “I need a long shower and I’ll be loads better.”

The Doctor handed her the ointment he’d been using. He didn’t meet her eyes. “After you shower, you should reapply this.”

Rose nodded. “Okay.” She watched as he walked stiffly out of the room.

Feeling numb, Rose dragged into their bathroom and stripped off the rest of her clothes. She turned on the water and climbed under the scalding hot shower spray. Her aching muscles burned as she rotated her shoulders under the water. The tears started without warning, and she leaned against the tiled wall, letting the sobs pour out. It was difficult to sort out all the reasons she was crying: a delayed reaction to the constant threat she’d existed under for the past several days, coupled with the horror of the final stand-off and confusion at the Doctor’s coldness in the infirmary. The two of them were so damaged by this experience, it was like they were staring at each other across a vast chasm. She had to figure out how to cross it. 

Rose cried herself out, then awkwardly washed her body and hair. She replayed everything the Doctor had said, trying to think of a way to get him to talk to her. Then it hit her. _I should probably know the extent of your other injuries._ She turned off the water. _Oh,_ she thought, _he believes … well, of course he does._

Rose dried off quickly and brushed her teeth, anxious to see him again. Standing naked in front of the sink, she tried to apply the salve to the injury on her back, but couldn’t reach.

“Here, let me.”

She hadn’t seen his reflection in the mirror; it was too fogged with steam. The Doctor came into the bathroom and took the jar from her. After a moment she felt his cool hand on her back, gently rubbing the salve into her injury. Rose sighed. 

When he was done, she turned to look at him, at the fear that still lurked in his face. “I think I figured out one thing that’s worrying you,” she said.

“What?” 

“You think I’m not telling you the truth about what happened to me.”

He shook his head. “You don’t have to tell me anything that you don’t want to,” he said.

“Doctor,” she said, touching his chin and raising his head, “whatever it is that you’re imagining, it wasn’t … I wasn’t raped or anything. Handled a little roughly by the Master and his henchmen, that’s all.”

His eyes took on a sheen of unshed tears and he looked at her with desperate hope, then just as quickly he averted his gaze again. “I understand that it’s not something you would want to talk to me about. Maybe Donna, you could talk to Donna—”

“Listen to me. I have no doubt that he would’ve done all sorts of horrible things to me if he thought he could get away with it. The way he looked at me …” Rose paused and shuddered. “But I fooled him,” she said, and laughed a little at the thought. “I made him think that I had all kinds of stealthy ninja Torchwood ways of taking my own life. I let him believe that if he raped me, or hurt me in any way that was serious, that I would kill myself, and then he’d have no bargaining chip for the TARDIS.” She shrugged. “It was pretty much a bluff. I never learned any creative suicide methods from Torchwood.”

The Doctor was looking at her with wonder. “Rose, oh, that’s clever.”

“So put your mind at ease. Whatever you’ve been picturing, it didn’t happen, I swear. I’m fine.” Rose stroked his cheek gently, and the Doctor’s face crumpled. Rose wrapped her arms around him tightly. She realized with shock that she couldn’t ever remember him crying in her presence before. Just the sound of his creaky sobs broke something inside of her, and she cried too.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about him hurting you. I had no way to stop him. Rose, I’m so sorry I couldn’t protect you.”

“Hey. It was my fault, I let myself get tricked into leaving the TARDIS. Please don’t blame yourself. Please don’t.”

They held each other awkwardly in the bathroom for a long time, Rose’s naked body pressed against his fully-clothed form. She snuffled against his brown jacket. 

“I bet you’re tired,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Come on, let’s get you tucked in.” The Doctor pulled on her hand and led her over to their bed. 

She had only been absent from it for a handful of days, but it felt like ages. Climbing under the covers, Rose settled onto her side and beckoned to him. “Get in with me.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You need to rest.”

“I need you.” 

His objection was half-hearted. The Doctor got undressed and crawled into bed. Rose spooned against his front, wriggling down into his embrace. His free arm wrapped securely around her waist, and she felt his lips on her hair. Rose closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but her mind was whirring at a million miles an hour. She fidgeted a little in the Doctor’s arms.

“You all right?” he asked, pulling away from her back slightly. “Am I hurting you?”

“No, I’m just not sleepy,” Rose said, and moved her body back against his again. “I want to be touching as much of you as I can. I missed you.”

His arm tightened around her waist. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to say that.”

“I do. You got hurt because of his hatred for me. Even if it wasn’t as bad as I feared …” The Doctor paused and she heard him swallow. “It still must’ve been nightmarish for you.”

“It wasn’t fun, but I’ll get over it.” Rose turned her head to look at him, and he raised up on one elbow. “Will you?”

“What?”

“You were terrifying, coming out of the TARDIS and shooting him. I’ve never seen you like that.”

“You never saw me during the Time War.” He leaned over and pressed his lips to her forehead, continuing to speak in a whisper. “I couldn’t stop playing the scenarios over and over in my mind, each one worse than the last. I think I was going a bit mad.”

Rose sighed. “I suppose I would’ve been too, in your place. It’s the danger of loving someone as much as I love you.”

The Doctor pressed his lips to hers, then put his head back on the pillow, pulling her snug against him. “Oh, I love you.” 

Rose wiggled her bottom against him and felt his cock starting to harden in response. She brought her hand back and touched his thigh, pulling slightly on his leg and continuing to move against him. The Doctor sighed against her hair and she felt his hips start to match her teasing rhythm. “Rose,” he murmured.

“Mm, want you,” she said as she stroked his leg. 

“I really should let you rest, darling,” he whispered.

“No, you really should make love to me. Then I’ll be able to rest.”

He didn’t protest further, instead removing his hand from around her waist and running it down her bottom so that he could touch her intimately. Rose lifted her leg and swung it back over his to give him better access. She felt his mouth on her neck at the same time she felt his fingers slide into her, and Rose smiled as she leaned into his touch. He pushed and pulled with his fingers slowly, teasing her clit at the same time, and Rose moaned. “You’re too good for me,” he said.

After a few minutes the Doctor removed his hand and Rose positioned herself against his cock. She felt him take himself in hand so that he could find the right angle, and then he was entering her. Rose pushed with her hips until he was fully sheathed. The Doctor gathered her into his arms again and held on tight. They didn’t move, only lay spooned together, coupled in perfect intimacy. 

Rose craned her neck around and kissed him. “I just realized something,” she said.

“What?”

“This is the first time we’ve ever made love as husband and wife in this bed.”

She still saw deep wells of pain in his eyes. “I thought we never would. I thought I’d lost you.”

“Stop it. You aren’t going to lose me, I promise.”

“You can’t—”

“Shhh.” Rose kissed him again gently. “I’m here. Be with me.”

They started to move together, the Doctor sliding in and out of her slowly. Rose closed her eyes and concentrated on the feeling of fullness, on his hand stroking her breast. She rotated her hips, working herself on him, and she felt the Doctor’s gasped reaction against her neck. Rose let her head fall back against him. After so much pain, she felt like they deserved these moments of pleasure all the more. She had no illusions that this would heal him, but it was most basic way she knew to show him that she loved all of him, even the frightening side that she had seen today.

He slipped his hand down between her legs, pressing against her in a way that made Rose’s thighs clench. She groaned, moving more rapidly and reaching back to grab his bottom. After another few seconds, she was coming, crying out softly.

The Doctor moved his hand to her hip and grabbed it for leverage, thrusting into her more forcefully. Rose moaned as her over sensitized flesh reacted to his movements. She noticed that he was quiet, which was odd; usually he would be babbling endearments or dirty talk into her ear at this point. She lifted her arm and wrapped it around his head, slipping her fingers into his hair. “Come for me,” she murmured.

“Rose,” he whispered, and then she sensed his body go rigid and a gentle pulsing inside her. She stroked his hair, otherwise keeping still against him. She felt him softening inside her, and his breaths ruffling the hair at the nape of her neck.

Rose shifted and rolled over, hugging him tightly. “Will you stay here and hold me?”

“Of course. For as long as you like.” He kissed the top of her head. “I don’t want to let you out of my sight, anyway.”

She could tell he was still haunted by everything that had happened, but there was nothing else she could do tonight. She could only hope that if they held onto each other tightly enough, the chasm would shrink with each passing day. Her worry finally gave over to bone-deep exhaustion and to the drowsiness caused by her orgasm, and she dropped off to sleep, her face pressed against the Doctor’s chest, his double heartbeat comforting her in sleep.


	17. Chapter 17

“I thought I might find you here,” the Doctor said.

Jenny looked up from where she was sitting in the TARDIS garden. “Yeah?”

“I remembered that you used to come here first thing in the morning when you were travelling with us before.” 

She smiled. “Also, I’d come here when you and I had a row,” Jenny said.

“Ah. Well, you must’ve gotten to know this garden pretty well,” he said, sitting next to her on the grass. 

“How’s Rose?”

The Doctor scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Incredibly, she’s fine. He didn’t hurt her the way I thought, and she’s … well, she’s brave and resilient and amazing. But she’s exhausted, and I’m hoping she’ll sleep a good long time yet.” 

“She isn’t the only one who was exhausted.”

“I know. I slept a little, in fits and starts. I kept checking to make sure she was really there.” The Doctor fixed his gaze on the small pond they were sitting next to.

“And how are you, really?”

“I’m all right.”

Jenny huffed with exasperation. “No, you aren’t.”

He sighed. “I did some things that I’m not proud of, and I’ve got to live with that. It’s not the first time, and probably won’t be the last. But I’m sorry you had to see me that way.”

“Don’t be. I think I like you more, knowing that you aren’t always so perfect. That you’re capable of going off the deep end when something really bad happens, that you aren’t always all logic and reason.”

“I definitely went off the deep end.”

“But you didn’t kill him, Dad.”

“Didn’t I? I may not have pulled the trigger, but I set it all in motion. I might as well have been the one to blow his brains out.”

Jenny shook her head. “No, _he_ set it all in motion. The Master’s fate was his own doing.”

“Well, in any case, he’s gone, and this time, I can’t bring myself to be sorry.”

“Don’t you think that’s good?,” Jenny asked, putting a hand on his sleeve. “That you aren’t so desperately lonely that you’d wish for a broken madman to keep you company?”

“Sure, but I don’t think that’s really the reason. I think it’s just that he threatened the person that I value most in the world, and I wanted revenge. When it comes to Rose, I don’t see clearly.”

“I think that’s just part of being in love with someone, Dad. So I’ve been told, anyway.”

“What am I going to do when I lose her for good?” he asked, his voice taking on a note of desperation.

“I think you’re creating trouble, worrying about that now, and who’s to say that you aren’t going to die first? It’s not impossible.”

“That’s true. A mercenary that I’ve tortured with a taser might shoot me in the head.”

Jenny flinched, and the Doctor glanced at her. “Sorry.”

“If you do lose her … you have people who will stand by you. You have Jack, and he’ll be around forever,” she said, laughing a little. “And … and you have me.”

He really looked at her then, measuring her with his eyes. With a small smile, he pulled her into an awkward hug, there on the ground. “Thank you,” he whispered.

They sat in silence for a while, holding hands. Jenny lifted his hand up and examined his ring. “Can I see it?”

“Of course,” he said, taking the ring off and handing it to her.

Turning it in the light, Jenny read the words aloud in his native tongue, softly to herself.

“I didn’t know you’d learned Gallifreyan,” he said with awe in this voice.

Jenny blushed, handing him the ring back. “I’ve learned a little. Took a few books from the library when I left.”

His face lit up with a smile. “That’s brilliant.”

“I know I’m not a Time Lord, I know I’ll never be, really, but—”

“Jenny, I was, well, impossible before. If I make an honest effort to be less impossible, would you travel with us again?”

She laughed. “I think we both deserve some of the blame for that disaster. But I don’t want to horn in on you and Rose.”

“You wouldn’t be. Rose gets lonely sometimes for company other than barmy old me, especially now that Donna has moved on. She’d love to have you. She misses you. I miss you.”

“I’ve missed you too.”

He smiled at her. “Is that a yes?”

Her answering grin lit up the room. “Yes.”

“Fantastic.”

 

*** 

 

Rose finally awoke at almost noon. She pulled on a comfortable pair of sweats and shuffled into the kitchen, where she found Donna on her mobile.

“I’ll be home in an hour. Okay. Love you too.” She clicked off and slipped the phone in her pocket. “Rose, how are you feeling?” Donna asked.

Rose shrugged and sat down. “Still sore, but a lot better than yesterday.”

“Your voice sounds dreadful. Tea?” Donna asked, getting the kettle already.

“Tea would be wonderful,” Rose answered. “The Doctor said it would take several days for my throat to heal. Do you hear anything from Martha?”

“I went and saw her this morning. They’re discharging her this afternoon. Tom was there, hovering around nervously, the way husbands do. And guess what she found out? They did some routine blood tests yesterday when she was admitted, right? She’s pregnant!”

“Oh, that’s brilliant!” Rose exclaimed.

“But then Tom found out she went on this dangerous mission and got shot and all the while she was pregnant. He was not happy.”

“Poor Martha.”

Donna sat across from her. “Everything all right with you and the Doctor?”

Rose nodded. “I think so, as much as it can be. He’ll be torturing himself for a while yet about all this. It’ll take time.”

“Don’t spend so much time looking after him that you forget to look after yourself. You may not have been hurt as badly as he feared, but it was an ordeal, and it’s going to take some time for you to process it. Allow yourself that, Rose.”

Rose took Donna’s hand. “We miss you terribly.”

Donna’s eyes filled with tears. “I miss you, too. But it was the right choice, getting married, and Phil is wonderful.”

“I’m glad. I just wish … sometimes the Doctor needs someone besides me, I think.”

“Well, you might get your wish there. Guess where he is right at this moment.”

“Where?”

“Doing some repair work in the console room with Jenny. And they are getting on like a house on fire. I think she might be joining you again, if I don’t miss my mark.”

“Oh, Donna, that would be so good for him. I hope you’re right.”

“Hey, lady, I’m always right, don’t you remember?” She got up to answer the whistling tea kettle. “Whatever happens, you make sure you come visit me often. At some point, you and I have to sit down and plan a baby shower!”

 

*** 

 

He stepped out of the TARDIS into an alien landscape. The two women that followed him looked around in wonder at their surroundings, at creeping vines covered with pungent flowers and strange meadows of undulating, purple grass. 

“Look over there!” Jenny called, pointing. “What was that?”

“It’s a native species,” he responded. “A bit like a lemur crossed with a sort of bird-like thing.”

“Come on, let’s get a closer look,” she called, already moving in that direction.

The Doctor looked at his wife, standing at his side. “We’ll catch you up later. Go ahead without us.”

Jenny ran off, ponytail swinging. He spread his coat out on the grass and sat down, patting the space next to him. Rose took her place at his side, smiling. The fading, yellow bruises on her face and neck were the only evidence of the nightmare of days past. She took his hand.

“We should go after her,” she said. “Someday I’m going to be too old for all the running.”

“Not for a long time,” he replied, “and right now I want to sit here with you.”

She nodded, closing her eyes as a gentle breeze lifted her hair. 

“You had a nightmare last night,” he said. “Do you remember?”

“Bits and pieces.” Rose looked at him. “Mostly I remember you holding me until I fell asleep again.”

“Well, that’s my job, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” She grinned, her tongue slipping out between her teeth. “Also, you know, servicing me sexually.”

“Oh, right. I forgot that part,” he said with his own cheeky grin that didn’t fade when she smacked him on the arm.

“Did Donna tell you? She’s threatening to throw us a belated wedding reception the next time we visit Earth.”

“Well, that settles it,” he said, stretching his legs out in front of him. “No more trips to Earth for us. Hope you didn’t like it that much.”

“Shut up.”

He sighed. “One more nail of domesticity in the coffin of my free-wheeling bachelor days.”

“Just wait until Martha asks you to be the godfather of her baby.”

He looked at her, horrified. “She wouldn’t.”

“I’ll bet you ten quid that she does.”

He groaned, flopping onto his back.

“You know what I think? I think secretly you love it. I saw your face when you walked Donna down the aisle, so don’t even try to lie.”

“Maybe I liked it a little bit.” He looked up at her. “Your voice is entirely back to normal, by the way.”

“Yep,” she said, nodding. “All healed.” Rose stretched out next to him on the ground, putting her head on his shoulder. “And how are you doing?”

“Oh, you know me,” he said, wrapping an arm around her.

“If you say you’re always all right, I might have to smack you.”

The Doctor laughed. “I’m eighty percent all right, how’s that?”

“Not bad, all things considered.”

“Nope, not bad.” They both looked up at the yellow sky over their heads, filled with gauzy, pinkish clouds. “Not bad at all.”

 

_END_


End file.
